FACTORS MILITATING AGAINST THE LEARNING OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ETHIOPE EAST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF DELTA STATE

FACTORS MILITATING AGAINST THE LEARNING OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ETHIOPE EAST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF DELTA STATE

Background Of The Study

The English language is acknowledged as a core subject, and it remains a requirement for all elementary and secondary school students (national policy on education, 2004, cited in Aduwa-Ogiegbaen, 2016). Therefore, the English language is employed as a means of communication in our social, economic, political, and cultural institutions, since it is recognized as a lingua franca in Nigeria and several other African nations. In schools, regardless of their nature, English serves as the language of teaching and learning. Also, English is employed in political activity. It is frequently used in our linguistically diverse culture, where more than three hundred distinct languages are spoken in various regions of the nation (Aduwa-Ogiegbaen, 2016). The majority of our national enterprises and foreign affairs are conducted in English. Consequently, the language of English in our educational world cannot be overstated. Sadly, despite the enormous benefits of using English in our daily lives, this subject remains widely or highly feared by many students in Nigeria, and the failure rate at the senior secondary school certificate examination level and other external examinations is frequently high; consequently, many candidates who aspire to higher education in universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education are unable to meet their expectations for continued study (Iyamu, 2016). Numerous researchers throughout the globe are of the opinion that English communication abilities have a substantial impact on students' performance in other subjects.

However, the learner's native language has a tongue to impede with the development of outstanding communication abilities in English. Therefore, English is a second language and must be learned as such before it can be used successfully for communication and other transactions (Breen, & Candlin, 2018). Consequently, the necessity for basic English learning and a decent education for Nigerian children has become a key issue, especially among parents. They feel that the problem of inefficient English learning by students is vital to any educational system (Iwashita, 2015). However, the output, which is children' academic performance, is determined by schools such as school location, school quality, and gender impacts, among others. Sabitu (2019), remarked that the spectacular performance of a student in the final examination indicates the quality of the school he/she attended, independent of school kind and location. Nonetheless, the prevalence of low academic performance among Nigerian students has become a major worry for all education stakeholders.

As previously stated, school types, including public and private schools, have a tendency to affect the quality of English learning among young students. According to Okon and Archibong (2015), students at private schools tend to do better than those in public schools since it is often thought that private schools in Nigeria are better financed and managed, and hence hire more competent teachers than public schools.

Bibby and Peil (2017) found that private elementary school students fared better than their public school counterparts. This position is also reinforced by Lioyd (2016), who said that public schools, which saw education as a positive, often left the question of educational success or failure to the public and parents. This suggests that the business of education is not taken as seriously as it ought to be in public schools.

Moreover, widespread use of pidgin English is an additional problem in English instruction and learning. It makes learning grammar difficult since, in most instances, the grammar or pidgin has been suggested and made to resemble that of certain indigenous Nigerian languages. In addition, Eme (2015) and Obanya (2018) identified a number of factors, such as the teacher, the school's location, the student's home environment, the influence of their peers, pedagogical variables, and government policies, during their investigation into the causes of effective English language learning in secondary schools. In light of the ingrained gender norms in Nigeria and Delta State in particular, an investigation of the function of gender remains relevant. Consequently, the relevant issue this researcher intended to address was: do gender differentials effect the academic accomplishment of English language students? This topic was answered by Zoghi, Kazemi, and Kalan (2013), who asserted that gender has been an influential emotional element in second language learning. In light of the above, the focus of this research is to identify the barriers to learning English in junior secondary schools.

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