Assessment of the Use of English Course in Polytechnics in the North-West Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the Use of English Course in Polytechnics in North-West Nigeria. The need for the study was born out of the seemingly falling standard of communicative competence demonstrated by students and graduates of polytechnics. In assessing the Use of English Course the study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population of the study was 11,954 made up of Higher National Diploma students and Use of English lecturers. Three instruments were used in the study. To investigate the study, 1,517 copies of the questionnaire were administered to the respondents; 1350 copies on Higher National Diploma students and 167 copies on lecturers drawn from six polytechnics. One thousand three hundred and sixty six copies were returned. The researcher personally observed typical lecture sessions from two out of the six polytechnics. Also, an interview protocol was used to elicit data from six coordinators of Use of English from the selected polytechnics. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the sample. Six research questions guided the study while six null hypotheses were formulated and tested at the probability of 0.05 level of significance. The data obtained were carefully analyzed using frequency counts, mean scores and standard deviation. The t-test statistics was used in testing the null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that while the objectives of the course were adequate, the underlying assumptions were defective and the needs were only being partially met. The instructional materials available for the implementation of the course were found to be grossly inadequate. The lecture method was discovered to be the most popular method used by the lecturers. Thus, it was recommended, amongst others that the funding and facilities made available for implementation of the course be improved upon. The National Board for Technical Education should review the Use of English course so that it can be more English for Specific Purposes based. The syllabi of the various faculties should be separated based on their specialty areas. Government should encourage continuous training and retraining of English and Communication skills of lecturers in the Polytechnic system to keep them up-to-date on developments in their field.