EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING ENGLISH TENSES ON STUDENTS’ ABILITY TO WRITE SCIENTIFIC
REPORTS IN PLATEAU STATE POLYTECHNIC, NIGERIA
JESSICA ATONG PINTA
BA Ed., M.Ed. (Jos)
UJ/2012/PGED/0549
A thesis in the Department of ARTS EDUCATION,
Faculty of Education,
Submitted to the School of Postgraduate Studies,
University of Jos, in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the award of the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ENGLISH
LANGUAGE EDUCATION of the
UNIVERSITY OF JOS
JANUARY 2017
ABSTRACT
The inability of students to use tenses
appropriately and the important role tenses play in scientific writing
necessitated the need for this study. In this regard, the study investigated
the effects of communicative approach to teaching English tenses on students’
ability to write scientific reports in Plateau State Polytechnic. The
objectives of the study were to determine the extent to which the students
would able to use appropriate tenses to write scientific reports and present
scientific information in the passive voice and to find out if teaching them
using the communicative approach would improve their ability to use appropriate
tenses. Four research questions and eight hypotheses guided the study. Population of the study was 896 National
Diploma One (ND1) students of the School of Science and Technology and School
of Engineering of Plateau State Polytechnic in the 2013/2014 academic session.
A sample of 104 students was drawn from seven out of the thirteen departments
in the two schools. Pre-test Post-test experimental research design was used to
carry out the study. A test known as the English Tenses Achievement Test (ETAT)
was used for data collection. The validity of the instrument was determined by
four experts. For reliability, the instrument was subjected to a pilot test.
Using the Split Half Reliability method, results obtained were correlated using
the Cronbach alpha statistical method. Reliability index of the instrument was
0.86. Percentage, mean scores and t-test
were used in analysing data collected. The results of the study showed that the
students had a low ability to use appropriate tenses to write scientific
reports and present scientific information in the passive voice. However, the
students’ ability improved significantly with Communicative Language Teaching
as they recorded a mean score of 81 in their ability to use appropriate tenses
to write scientific reports as opposed to an initial mean score of 46. On
ability to present scientific information in the passive voice, the students
obtained a mean score of 15 in the Pre-test and 33 in the Post-test. These
findings are significant and demonstrate that there are challenges in learning
the perfect tenses and the passive voice. It was recommended that English
tenses should not be taught in isolation but within a communicative context to
provide meaning. Also, while teaching individual tenses, other related tenses
should be introduced in order to show similarity and contrast.
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
TO THE STUDY
Students of science and technology are engaged in
carrying out different tasks using language. They among others, describe
experimental procedures, events, processes, or objects. They are equally
engaged in reporting results and conclusions of experiments. The critical
language element that is used to convey these tasks is the verb. The verb is
what makes the sense of a sentence complete and it has tense and voice as its
property.
In addition to the tasks the students are engaged in carrying out using
language, scientific writings or technical reports follow a specific format
meant to present information that is clear, accurate, concise and factual. In
particular, science and technology reports are characterized by exactness,
precision impersonal use of language and brevity. For this reason, the students
need to be able to use language elements that will not only help them carry out
their various tasks, but also help them in presenting information that is
clear, exact and impersonal.
Among the language elements that express exactness particularly of time
sense and impersonal use of language, are tense and the passive voice. Tense
and voice go hand in hand and are dominant features of the English verb which
is an obligatory element in a sentence. In addition, tenses are grammatical
items that are needed in order to master different text types (Richards, 2006).
Besides, the simple present, the simple past and present perfect account for
approximately 80 percent of the verb tense used in academic writing (Writing
Center 2014). In addition, tense choice is the communicative repertoire of
scientific writers which they use to create and communicate information and which
is responsive to the rhetorical demands of communicating about science
(Liddicoat, 2004). Tenses identified as commonly used in science and technology
are simple present and simple past tense.
In science and technology, the actor is not as important as the situation
or the thing being acted upon as such, the passive voice is predominantly used.
Wrong use of tenses and voice can create ambiguity. This is unacceptable and
can trigger serious reactions or even criticisms. This is because tenses have
both temporal and rhetoric functions as such, a reader of a scientific write up
or a listener of scientific discourse can infer context from the way tenses are
used. Without a proper understanding of how to use the tenses, information will
be presented wrongly and there will be difficulty in distinguishing between an
author’s own opinion and what is accepted in scientific knowledge as universal
truth.
Despite the demand for students to properly master the use of tenses and
the passive voice, students have, according to research (Murthy, 2007) and
practical classroom experience of the researcher, continued to demonstrate
difficulty in the use of tenses both in the active and passive voice. This is
not unconnected with ambivalent rule application in the use of tenses.
Difficulty encountered is also because of the various morphological forms of
the English verb which renders some as regular and others as irregular (Aje,
2009). In the case of the passive voice, problems arise because of the
subversion of the normal reader expectation that fits the common English order
of subject, verb and object (Murthy, 2007). In addition to this, is poor
teaching methodology (Aje, 2009).
Demonstrating an understanding of the use of tenses or the passive voice is
not enough for the students to develop fluency in a language. However,
developing students’ mastery of
language elements that the students encounter difficulty in using can
contribute to the overall development of language. What the students need to be
able to do with language elements is to know how, when, where, why to use them
and which one to use at particular instances.
Consequently, channelling language instruction to meet the need of the
students will be of immense benefit to them. This is in line with the aim of
the Use of English course in Nigerian polytechnics as spelt out by the National
Board for Technical Education. The National Curriculum of the Use of English
course in Nigerian polytechnics explained that the course is meant to have the
learners use the language in meaningful communication. This is what
communicative competence is all about.
The language course for students of polytechnics is meant to provide the
students with necessary skills which will enable them to cope with the
challenges of their courses and be able to use grammar items in their everyday
communication (NBTE, 2004). However, from the course syllabus, tenses and other
language items are supposed to be taught communicatively based on the goal of
the language class but there is inconsistency between the approach being used
and the course syllabus. This is in addition to the fact that the language
course syllabus is general and does not address specific needs of the students.
Achieving communicative competence is the aim of every language instruction
no matter the approach used in the instruction. This then implies that language
taught using the Communicative Approach and other approaches like the
Structural Approach is expected to develop the communicative competence of the
learners. It is therefore of great importance to language teaching pedagogy
that ways of developing communicative competence in the students regardless of
the language element being taught should be sought and adopted for use in the
classroom. This is not to say that there is a single approach that is
considered most appropriate, as all approaches have a place in language
teaching and learning pedagogy.
The Communicative Approach is considered for use in this study because it
is one of the language teaching approaches that emerged as a result of
criticisms of the traditional and structural approaches which were earlier
used. In addition, studies have shown that the Communicative Approach sees
language learning as holistic as such, knowledge of grammatical system as well
as performance is necessary (DeKeyser, 2001). Also, proponents of the
Communicative Approach say that it has been discovered to be an innovative
approach in developing language skills in students in both English as a second
language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) settings (Incecay &
Incecay, 2009; Xiao, 2011).
Though the Communicative Approach is basically a fluency development approach, competence in the use of tenses and the passive voice which is an accuracy skill plays an important role in the overall communication process. Teachers have observed that communication especially in a second language is difficult for students with low grammatical competence even though they are equally quick to observe that higher grammatical competence does not necessarily guarantee better communication in the target language (Lee & Wang, 2002). Moreover, research is inconclusive as to whether the Communicative Approach is more effective than other approaches, especially in the teaching of tenses in relation to scientific report writing, hence the need for more investigation.
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