Concord problems among students of senior high school form one a case study in Kintampo Senior High School

Abstract

English as a Second Language (ESL) writing is a challenge to most of the students in Ghanaian schools. This study was carried out to investigate the concord problems among students of Kintampo Senior High School. The purpose was to find out the nature and causes of these concord errors which involved subject-verb agreement in the way students use it especially in writing. The participants who took part in the study were form one General Arts and Home Science students of Kintampo Senior High School. The tools used were test, observation and questionnaire in their spoken English and during concord lessons with their English teacher. Data collected were analyzed using tables, and descriptions which made comparison of preintervention and post-intervention results easy. Having analyzed the data, the study revealed that students were not proficient in the use of grammatical concord as a result of poor foundation they had in their previous level (JHS) before entering senior high school. Concord errors were caused by such factors as the inconsistency in the concord rules of English, overgeneralization of the rules as well as the interference of the mother tongue (L1) in English. In other to minimize concord errors, the study offered a variety of strategies that could be employed by both teachers and learners of English. The study concludes that more exciting methods such as grammar in context, use of substitution tables, practice drills among others should be employed by teachers to arouse students’ interest in the language.