| dc.description.abstract | English Language plays a central and strategic role in the school system because almost all the school subjects are taught using English language. However, students' achievement in this subject in secondary school is not encouraging. Therefore, the purpose of the study will be to investigate the factors influencing performance of English language in public secondary in Bomet district in Kenya. Chapter one of the proposal gives a background to the study which shows that though tremendous research has been done on factors influencing language studies, the influence of these factors in rural Kenya is still unknown. The statement of the problem that justified the study is that for a long time, local examination averages in English have always consistently fallen below the national averages and therefore there is a need to discover the reasons behind this worrying trend. The research objectives are to assess the influence of teacher qualifications on performance in English, to determine the extent to which the availability of teaching and learning materials affects performance in English, to investigate the extent to which school factors affect performance in English and to investigate the extent to which home factors influence performance in English in public secondary schools in Bomet schools.
Chapter two reviewed the empirical literature related to factors that influence students' achievement in English and it was organized according to the research objectives that addressed: teacher quality, teaching and learning resources, school factors, home background respectively. The study was guided by the Communicative Language Theory which explains the processes and goals in language teaching and learning. The influence of linguistic factors on achievement was summarized by a conceptual framework. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design .The target population was 14,434 studentJ and 56teachers of English in Bomet District and a sample of 26 English Language teachers and 374 students selected through stratified sampling procedure. Questionnaires were administered to the sampled respondents.
The data collected was presented in frequency distribution tables and analysed using descriptive statistics. The major findings of the study were that a majority of the teachers of English were qualified and highly experienced to guarantee good results in the subject.However,dismal performance in 'English is caused by an increased work load faced by these teachers, very large class sizes as a result of the Free Primary Education and Free Day Secondary School programmes initiated by the government to boost enrollment in Kenyan schools. Inadequate teaching and learning resources also contributed to a decline in the performance in English .The school and home environment were also found to be highly unconducive and unsupportive to the achievement of excellent performance in English. The researcher recommends that for schools to perform highly in English language national examinations, more qualified teachers of English should be employed urgently by the government. School managers and parents should also provide adequate books to both teachers and students, create conducive environment for excellence and inculcate the value of hard work in order to improve performance. Parents who have low levels of education should enroll for adult education classes and advise their children to aspire higher in order to attain academic excellence. The results of the study are expected to be useful to parents, students, teachers of English and policy makers. | en_US |
