| dc.description.abstract | Mathematics is the bedrock of all science and technological based subject. Understanding abstract concepts and ideas in mathematics if instructions takes place in the second language of the students is challenging as it is the case in Kenyan secondary schools where students have to study Mathematics via English language and this is a recognized problem. However the poor performance of students in mathematics test has become a thing of great concern to all stakeholders such as parents, teachers and government. The purpose of the study was to find out the influence of students English language competence on performance in mathematics. Researchers in Kenya have in the past addressed the causes of poor performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education and have come up with the following as main courses: inappropriate syllabus, poor teaching methods, over-enrollment, sex and students poor attitude towards mathematics as some of the reasons .
The Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Education has tried to solve some of these problems by training more mathematics teachers , revising mathematics syllabus to review content and also appropriateness of topics. Most recent effort by the Ministry of Education was the introduction of Strengthening of Mathematics and Science in Secondary Education programme in the year 2001. In Kenya today the problem of poor performance in mathematics at K.C.S.E remains a challenge. K.N.E.C (2008) results analysis indicates that students mean score in both paper 1 and 2 is between 14.57 % and 22.71 % for the last four years . This prompted the researcher to suggest that students English language competence needs to be investigated for its possible relationship with poor performance and which has not been exhaustively studied in Kenya yet.
The study used a cross- sectional descriptive survey research design .Meru Central District has been purposefully selected because more than 85% of the students selected to join Secondary schools are local and speak 'Kimeru' as their first language . The study used a sample of 248 form three students randomly selected . The students did a mathematics test set to test both English language competence and also mathematics competence .A further sample of 30 trained mathematics teachers were randomly sampled from the population of 147 trained mathematics teachers within the district filled a questionnaire.
The data obtained from Student Mathematics Test Questionnaire used both qualitative and quantitative while data from Trained mathematics teachers questionnaire used qualitative. Qualitative was converted into quantitative data and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences. The statistics derived included percentages, mean and standard deviation. The main findings of the study were that majority of the students lacked the relevant communication skills to enable them to perform well in mathematics .Further findings revealed that at least 72.2% of the students scored averagely and below average in matching the words with ordinary English meaning and the same results were reflected in matching the words with their mathematics meaning 51.4%.Majority of the students 72.7% performed poorly in test involving expressing mathematical sentences into symbolic forms. This indicated that the students were lacking in the comprehension of mathematical terms that interpretation thereof into symbolic forms thus affecting their results .Majority of the teachers 100% preferred to use KBL textbooks because they use 36.7% simple English language that is easily understood by the students.
It was however agreed by teachers 86.7% that student s English language ability affected their performance. It was concluded that though the teachers were comfortable delivering mathematical concepts in English their students had difficulties communicating mathematically. In view of this, the study recommended that teachers should work towards helping students in translating and simplifying complex terms in the questions, giving real life and different examples with the same concept as the question and encouraging students to regularly speak in English so as to increase their mastery in their language .Future studies should utilize observation studies in depth and use of video or audio recording data to further probe the influence of students' English language competence on mathematics performances. The study aims at encouraging and stimulating debate on mathematics performance .It is expected to provide insight reference to policy makers, scholars and researchers. | en_US |
