Poor grasp of primary English affects students performance in senior school

Teacher Amos taught English and Literature in one secondary school. He noted that every new form one class had some learners who were timid to a fault. They hardly talked in English and when they did, they generously dropped Kiswahili words in their sentences.

Over the years, Amos would painstakingly take them through introductory lessons of the secondary English curriculum while at the same time correcting apparent gaps that ought to have been addressed in primary school. Mostly, the learners  knew their way around grammar and comprehension and their core problem was largely lack of confidence especially in the presence of their classmates from private academies who would speak fluent English. As a facilitator in many English workshops, Amos would awe everybody with his uncanny insights on the challenges and remedies for teaching the language in senior school. Needless to say, he was spotted by publishers and contracted to develop textbooks.

Welcome to the primary school English teaching gaps that senior school teachers have to deal with. Often, it is a question of where the rain started beating us.

One pertinent question is whether or not their primary English teachers skipped the correct phonetic intonations in their lessons.  Let's face it, the lower primary curriculum has put little emphasis on pronunciations. Many learners are not exposed to homophones and sounds. They are simply taught the foundational alphabetical pronunciations which at times are pronounced wrongly depending on the geographical location of the school.

The net effect is that these learners transit to senior schools, where speaking skills are given more prominence and with these gaps, they would be puzzled that English words no longer sound as they look and everybody seems to pronounce everything “wrongly.”

Another glaring gap is that in primary schools, learners are rarely taught how to use dictionaries. In senior schools, learners are expected to get phonetic transcription of words from the dictionary. They may find it difficult even to scan these sounds if they have no prior knowledge on how to use the dictionary.

A serious primary school baggage that spills over to senior school are the questions: Were the pupils exposed to sufficient creative writing and their imagination nurtured to run wild? Was there enough story reading time with carefully selected readers that could hook young learners to the beauty of the English language?

The answers are often dampening. Many primary school English teachers do not give their learners imaginative compositions to write. They have flimsy excuses that there is no time to mark and the populations are so mammoth that it will add more workload for them. Therefore, learners are left to rely on village anecdotes and gossips when they are told to create a composition in some strange English that barely communicates.

But perhaps the mother of all baggages brought to secondary schools is insufficient speaking skills. This is the elephant in the house. Often, pupils have little or none exposure to activities that would sharpen their speaking agility. Debates, impromptu speeches and story telling are not emphasized.

Some teachers in primary and junior schools are culpable here. It is normal for them to speak in mother tongue during tea breaks in the school compound without caring that the pupils are listening. Some headteachers stand accused of routinely emphasizing all important points in vernacular during school assemblies. Learners from such schools often get a shocker when they transit to secondary schools and witness school assemblies conducted solely in English.

Ultimately, these language gaps created in primary schools have a serious repercussions to learning of English and Literature in Senior schools. Often, skillful English and literature teachers in secondary schools create remedial programmes for dealing with this carryover effect once they notice it. These gaps must be  bridged early to avoid to ease the roll out of the secondary curriculum to new learners from diverse primary schools. This is because the teaching and learning of all subjects in senior school is carried in English except for Kiswahili language.

Mr Mwangi teaches at St Charles Lwanga High School in Thika ([email protected])