A STUDY OF RURAL AND URBAN SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY (FCT)
Emelogu, N. U
Department of Arts Education,
Faculty of Education
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
And
Dr. D. N Rinji
Department of Arts and Social Science Education
Faculty of Education
University of Abuja
Abstract
This study examines the achievement of rural and urban students in composition writing in secondary schools in Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The survey research was conducted with the population of all senior secondary two (SS2) students in government owned schools in FCT. They were seven thousand, four hundred and sixty-six (7,466) students. The rural and urban schools have already been classified by the FCT Secondary Education Board. Based on this fact, the researcher selected seven urban schools and five rural schools using proportionate stratified random sampling technique from a total of fifty-one senior secondary schools. Also, a proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of three hundred and fifty (350) SS2 students. The study sought to find out if there were differences in the composition writing achievement of rural and urban senior secondary two students in Federal Capital Territory. The differences were compared in the four assessment sub-skills of writing which are content, organization, expression and mechanical accuracy. The instrument used for data collection was a test on writing skills (TOW). Four hypotheses were tested which sought to determine if there was any significant difference in the aspect of content, organization, expression and mechanical accuracy in composition writing between the rural and urban students. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. The urban students achieved higher than the rural students in the area of content and organization. But in the area of expression and mechanical accuracy, there was no significant difference between the urban students and the rural students. It was recommended that learning facilities and materials that enhance the learning of writing skills should be provided for the students in their various schools.
Keywords: Rural, urban, composition writing, achievement, senior secondary students