Challenges in teaching and learning Integrated Writing Skills in English in Secondary Schools in Bungoma North District, Kenya.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges the teachers and learners of English encountered in using integrated writing skills approach in teaching and learning of writing in Bungoma North District. The objectives of the study were to establish: how teachers of English use the integrated writing skills approach to teach writing, the factors that hinder the teaching and learning of integrated writing, the challenges teachers of English face in utilizing the integrated writing skills approach in teaching writing and the challenges learners of English face in utilizing the integrated writing skills approach in learning writing. Swain's (1980) Output Hypothesis of second language learning and the process theory of language learning guided this study. The study used descriptive survey design, which is suitable for the study of behaviour, attitudes, values and characteristics. The study was carried out in Bungoma North District, which has 50 secondary schools. Out of these, 5 are boys' schools, 8 are girls' schools and 37 are mixed secondary schools. Therefore stratified random sampling was used to select only 20 secondary schools, which formed 40% of the population of the schools. Simple random sampling was used to select 200 form three students and then purposive sampling was used to select 20 teachers of English from the selected schools. Questionnaires, interviews and observation schedules were used to collect data. Data collected was analyzed descriptively using measures of central tendencies; mean, mode and median and then data was presented in tables, graphs and pie charts. The study established that teachers and learners were aware of integrated writing skills approach but they have not embraced it fully. It was also found that the main challenges in using this approach by both teachers and the learners were: the learners' language level was very low, the approach called for more time than the time allocated for teaching and learning writing and that some schools did not have enough texts to be used by both teachers and students. It is therefore recommended that teachers should see the relationship between summary writing, outlining, editing, reviewing and expressing opinion and the whole process of integrated writing. Teachers should carefully plan to teach writing. There is need for the government to help in equipping schools with a variety of textbooks and other reading material.