Role of Extensive Reading Habits in Students’ Acquisition of Composition Writing Skills in English in Kenya
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Date
2020
Authors
Mwangi, Francis G.
Bwire, Adelheid M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Knowledge Sharing Platform
Abstract
Despite the important role reading proficiency plays in learners daily lives both within and outside school,
there has been a lot of concern from educationist, researchers and media in Kenya who have reported a saddening
trend on poor reading culture among many students in Kenya, This study was prompted by the observed poor
reading and writing in English by secondary schools learners in Laikipia County in Kenya. The study therefore
sought to establish whether there existed any relationship between extensive reading habits and composition
writing amongst learners. The study was guided by Schmidt's (1975) Schema Theory. The descriptive survey
research design was used for this study. Fifteen secondary schools in Laikipia County were sampled by
proportional stratified sampling technique in five sub-counties across the county. Purposive sampling was used to
sample 30 out of 80 (37.5%) English language teachers. Simple random sampling was used to sample 327 students
out of about 2670 students (12.24%) in form 2 and 3 in the County. The research instruments used for data
collection included: questionnaire for students, interview guides for teachers and composition writing test. The
instruments were pilot tested to ensure validity and reliability in a co- educational secondary school in the
neighbouring county that was not included in the study. The reliability of the questionnaire and interview guide
was estimated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient which was 0.871 which met the recommended threshold of 0.7
and above. Analysis of data was done using descriptive statistics such as frequency, tables and percentages.
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was done at 95% confidence level (F(2) = 80.933, P = .001) to establish whether
there was statistically significance difference between composition writing mean scores of different categories
of school using (SPSS) version 17. Qualitative data were organized according to the study themes and presented
descriptively on the basis of the study objective. It was found that learners who engaged actively in extensive
reading performed better in composition writing than those who did not. However, it was established that acute
shortage of reading resources was a major hindrance to engagement in extensive reading in schools. The study
recommended that schools should come up with strong extensive reading policy to promote independent reading
so as to improve their writing skills.
Description
A research article published in Journal of Education and Practice
Keywords
Extensive reading, Habits, Acquisition
Citation
Journal of Education and Practice. Vol.11, No.30, 2020