Instructional elements determining learners’ verbal communicative competence development in english language classroom interactions in Secondary Schools in Turbo Sub County, Kenya

Abstract

Learners with well-developed communicative competence are able to understand and effectively use language for communication purposes by forming and employing appropriate utterances. Though development of communicative competence is a key objective of learning English in secondary school, research points to the inability of secondary school learners to express themselves verbally in English. Therefore this study was an investigation into instructional elements that determine verbal communicative competence development of learners’ in English during classroom interaction in Turbo Sub County in Uasin Gishu County. The research objectives were to: find out the type of teaching strategies employed by teachers to enhance development of learners’ verbal communicative competence during classroom interaction; investigate the role played by the English language teachers in enhancing learners’ verbal interaction in the development of communicative competence in the classroom; establish the availability and use of instructional material in enhancing learners’ verbal communicative competence development during classroom interactions; determine how learners’ attitude towards English influences their verbal communicative competence development in English during classroom interactions. This study was anchored on Lev Vygotsky's theory of language development which focuses on social learning and the zone of proximal development (ZPD), a level of development obtained when children engage in social interactions with others. It is the distance between a child's potential to learn and the actual learning that happens, thus the reference to classroom interactions for development of communicative competence. The study adopted descriptive research design which involved the convergent mixed methods approach. This involved simultaneous and independent data collection and analysis and merging the results for comparison and proper interpretation. A sample of 23 schools of the total number of schools was selected for the study. Stratified random sampling were used to group schools either as single gender or mixed. Simple random and proportionate samplings were used to choose 1 boy school, 1 girl school and 21 mixed schools. The respondents included 460 form three students and 23 form three teachers of English who were selected using simple random sampling. This totaled to a sample size of 483. Data collection instruments were: questionnaire for students, English language teachers and an observation guide. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis procedures. Findings indicated that preferred teaching strategies as: group discussions and debates while project work, simulations and fieldwork as rarely used. Teacher roles mainly involved giving instructions during the lesson, guiding discussions and encouraging learners to communicating English outside classroom. Learners’ engagement involved singing, public speaking and group discussions. The commonly utilized instructional materials were textbooks. Most learners’ negative attitude towards verbal communication was attributed to mother-tongue influence. The study concludes: learners were exposed to a limited range of teaching strategies, instructional materials and engaging teacher role thus acting as a hindrance to the development of their verbal communicative competence. The study recommends: teachers should strive to increase student class talk time, provide sufficient practice in speaking to achieve fluency using different kinds of texts written for different purposes. The study leads to an understanding of the learners’ needs and attitudes, teaching materials and strategies that may enhance learners’ verbal communicative competence development