| dc.description.abstract | English is an important subject in the Kenya school curriculum as it is the medium of
instruction. At secondary school level, it is taught and examined as an integrated subject i.e,
with the Language and the Literature parts being taught and examined as one English
subject. Past studies and observations indicate that performance in English at Kenya
Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) level has been poor for several years now. This
study was prompted by these indications and was intended to analyse performance in English
at KCSE Examination in order to verify these sentiments and document the true position. A
sample of five years, 1994-1998 has been used in this analysis. The study has identified
areas in the English syllabus where students perform well and areas where they perform
poorly. It has also compared the overall performance of boys and girls.
This study hopes to make a contribution to the limited research that has been. done
on performance in English in Kenya's education system. The target population used for the
study was the KCSE candidates of each academic year from 1994 to 1998. For each English
Examination question, a stratified random sample was used and the results of the analysis
presented in narrative, tables and various types of graphs.
The results reveal that of the two parts of the English Examination namely; Language
and Literature, students perform better in Language than Literature. Language contributes
an average of 67% of the total score over the five-year period 1994-1998. They further
show that for grades between A and B, girls occupy a higher percentage than boys. | en |
