RP-Confucius Institute
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Browsing RP-Confucius Institute by Author "Ndung’u, Ruth W."
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Item Acquisition of English Vocabulary among Kenyan Learners: Challenges and Implications for Classroom Teaching Practice(2014-06-17) Njoroge, Martin C.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.Item Education as a tool for empowering Kenya's street children for realization of Millennium Development Goals(2014-06-13) Njoroge, Martin C.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.Education is an empowering process that enables those who have been marginalized in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres to claim their status as fully participating members of the society. Nevertheless, research conducted in Kenya reveal that about 300,000 street children in Kenya have had no formal education and are hardly proficient in the two co-official languages used in the country – English and Swahili- languages in which vital information leading to improved livelihoods and participation in national development is available. Drawing evidence from a study on the literacy and numeracy needs of street children in Kenya, the paper argues that street children need to be equipped with appropriate knowledge through acquisition of numeracy, language and literacy skills for them to be fully empowered to be able to participate in the country's development and by extension help the country in the achievement of the first and second Millennium Development Goals: eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, and achievement of universal primary educationItem Mother tongue and education in Africa: Publicising the reality(Multilingual Education, 2014-07) Njoroge, Martin C.; Kioko, Angelina N.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.; mutiga, JayneVaried realities surround the use of mother tongue education in Africa. These realities are entrenched in the attitudes and misconceptions that have gone unchallenged due to inadequate literature on the successful use of mother tongues in the classroom and beyond. The realities discussed in this paper include the frustrations of children introduced to education in a foreign language; misconceptions about the success of mother tongue education; educational benefits of mother tongue education; and mother tongues and enhanced economic opportunities. The foci of this paper are the success stories from Africa and the economic benefits in the use of the mother tongue in creative media or economies. These success stories are a way of getting to stakeholders to invest in mother tongue education for there are returns on such investment. The stories are also a way of challenging scholars to get out of the conference rooms and do something gainful with the mother tongues.Item Multilingualism and Education: The Critical Nexus(2012) Njoroge, Martin C.; Mwangi, Phillis W.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.; Orwenjo, D. O.Item Tthe phonetic status of (r) in Gĩkũyũ, a Kenyan bantu language: an acoustic analysis.(2014-06-13) Njoroge, Martin C.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.The phonetic status of some speech sounds presents a challenge in some African languages, especially those whose phonology has not been studied extensively using speech analyzers. Issues arise over the place or the manner of articulation of such phonemes. (r) is one of the speech sounds in Gĩkũyũ that presents a challenge in terms of determining its manner of articulation. Though the occurrence of the speech sound (r) in Gĩkũyũ is undisputed, there is no consensus on its phonetic description. The question this article sought to answer is whether the speech sound is a trill, tap or approximant. The article is based on a descriptive research that adopted a qualitative design. Data were collected from forty eight native speakers of Gĩkũyũ. The variables taken into consideration were age, gender, education and dialect. Data was collected using two research instruments: a wordlist and guided conversations. The two research instruments took care of the occurrence of (r) in word initial and word medial positions. The data were analysed using the WaveSurfer speech analyser program and native listeners acoustic cues to determine the manner of articulation. The analyses were presented using graphical representation in waveforms. The findings indicate that (r) is an alveolar approximant and not a trill or a tap. The recommendation of the authors is that there is need to revise the Gĩkũyũ phonemic inventory in order to capture the correct manner of articulation. There is also need for speech research on sounds whose phonetic status is disputed such as the prenasalized stops so as to describe them accurately tooItem The Use of Crossword Puzzles as a Vocabulary Learning Strategy: A Case of English as Second Language in Kenyan Secondary Schools(International Journal of Current Research, 2013) Njoroge, Martin C.; Ndung’u, Ruth W.; Gathigia, Moses GatambukiThis paper focuses on the application of crossword puzzles in the teaching of vocabulary in English as Second Language (ESL) classrooms. A pre-test was used to measure the learners’ previous knowledge of English vocabulary in a Form 2 class. The pre- test was marked and recorded. A comprehension passage was composed by the researchers and read by both the control and experimental classes. While the control class was exposed to the Traditional Lexical Pedagogy in the teaching of vocabulary the experimental cohort was exposed to a crossword puzzle. A post-test was administered at the end of the study to measure whether there was a significant difference in scores between the experimental and control groups. The scores were tabulated and analyzed quantitatively using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences and emerging patterns discussed. Levene's Test for Equality of Variances was then employed. The general finding is that the use of crossword puzzles in the teaching of English as Second Language is an effective strategy of vocabulary instruction. The study concludes that the use of crossword puzzles is of pedagogical significance as it helps learners enlarge vocabulary and deepen their mastery of the English lexis.