BECE Candidates’ Weaknesses In English Language And Remedies | Extract From Chief Examiners Report For BECE 2023

BECE Candidates’ Weaknesses In English Language And Remedies | Extract From Chief Examiners Report For BECE 2023

Teachers preparing students for any examination are always worried about the potential weaknesses in answers that their students will provide during the examination. Fortunately, the main examining body, the West Africa Examination Council always provide BECE candidates’ weaknesses in English Language during the last held examination.

WAEC Summary of 2019 BECE English Language Paper Two (2)

A. SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ STRENGTHS

Some candidates did remarkably well in a number of areas. Under Content, a good number of them who answered Question 1 were able to mention the types of games that should be encouraged in their schools while many who answered Question 2 stated the importance of being computer-literate. Many candidates who answered Question 3 were also able to end their stories with the given words.

In respect of Expression and Organisation respectively, many of them made judicious use of the language and displayed a remarkable degree of knowledge of the formal features of the essays they wrote. The paragraphs were well-developed and logically linked.

Some of the candidates seemed to be adept at answering questions on the comprehension and literature aspects of the paper, as their works in these parts were good.

B. SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ WEAKNESSES

Some of the candidates seemed to have lost focus of the requirements of the essay questions. Even where relevant points were raised, they were left unexplained.

Again, there were others who displayed a lack of appropriate vocabulary items and this hindered their ability to express themselves clearly and meaningfully.

Grammatical/ syntactical errors marred the quality of the answers of almost all the candidates, thereby significantly diminishing their marks.

It seemed some of the candidates did not read the comprehension passage before proceeding to answer the questions on it, as their answers were completely unrelated to the given passage. There were others who simply copied portions of the passage and passed them off as answers without caring about whether they were appropriate responses to the questions.

Again, some candidates did not number their answers, or used a form of numbering different from the one used in the question paper. This practice should be avoided as it makes candidates’ work difficult to mark.

In part C (Literature), many of the candidates displayed very little acquaintance with the set texts from The Cockcrow and obtained appallingly low marks. Questions on figures of speech posed great difficulty to most of the candidates. In addition, some candidates wrote wrong/ meaningless/ irrelevant answers while others wrote no answers at all.

C. SUGGESTED REMEDIES

(1) Candidates should pay more attention to the study of the grammar and structure of the English language.

(2) They should be helped to distinguish between the form/format of the various types of essays.

(3) They should read widely and also use the dictionary often so as to improve upon their stock of vocabulary and power of expression.

(4) They should be made to do a lot of exercises on essay writing.

(5) They should be encouraged to diligently read the texts in The Cockcrow.

(6) They should study literary devices in order that they would be able to identify

them in texts.

(7) They should read the questions carefully for thorough understanding before

proceeding to answer them.

(8) They should be helped to learn the techniques of answering the various types of

questions on comprehension passages, especially the wh-question

WAEC Summary of 2018 BECE English Language Paper Two (2)

A. SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ STRENGTHS

A few of the candidates made judicious use of the English language and displayed a remarkable degree of knowledge of the formal features of the essays they wrote.

Some of the candidates seemed to be adept at answering questions on the comprehension and literature aspects of the paper as their works in these parts were good.

B. SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ WEAKNESSES

A number of the candidates could not tell a debate from an ordinary argumentative writing and consequently wrote the former instead of the latter.

Also, some of the candidates seemed to have lost focus of the requirements of the essay questions. To cite an instance, there were a number of candidates who answered Question 3 and instead of simply requesting the maintenance of the existing buildings, they asked for the putting up of new structures.

Again, there were others who displayed a lack of appropriate vocabulary items and this hindered their ability to express themselves clearly and meaningfully.

Grammatical and syntactical errors obtruded in the answers of almost all the candidates and thereby significantly diminished their marks.

In addition, many of the candidates displayed very little acquaintance with the set texts from ‘The Cockcrow’ and obtained appallingly low marks. Questions on figures of speech also posed great difficulty to most of the candidates.

Finally, a lot of the candidates had difficulty with answering wh-question

C. SUGGESTED REMEDIES

(1) Candidates should pay more attention to the study of the grammar and structure of the English language.

(2) They should be helped to distinguish between the various types of essays.

(3) They should read widely and also use the dictionary often so that they can improve upon their stock of vocabulary and power of expression.

(4) They should be made to do a lot of exercises on essay writing.

(5) They should be encouraged to read the selected texts in ‘The Cockcrow’ carefully.

(6) They should study literary devices in order that they would be able to identify them in texts.

(7) They should read the questions carefully for thorough understanding before proceeding to answer them.

(8) They should be assisted to learn the techniques of answering questions, especially wh-questions on comprehension passages

WAEC Summary of 2017 BECE English Language Paper Two (2)

A. A SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ STRENGTHS

(1) Use of language:

The good candidates displayed some degree of proficiency in the use of idiomatic English. Their grasp of rudiments such as grammar, tense and punctuation was commendable. Sentence structure and sentence construction were well managed.

Sentences were well constructed and straight to the point and revealed variety of patterns. Candidates could write fluid idiomatic English with apt register which was quite refreshing to read.

(2) Vocabulary and use of register:

The good candidates demonstrated mastery in this area. This was quite evident in the essay-writing which demanded some amount of technical language, especially the article-writing task on ‘The usefulness of the mobile phone’. In addition, candidates also showed knowledge of formal and informal uses of language in the

letter-writing and the story-writing tasks.

(3) Handling of subject matter:

There was mature handling of subject matter in most of the essays. Candidates advanced cogent points and well-argued presentations. In the letter-writing and article-writing tasks, points were exhaustively discussed with good development of ideas drawn from the candidates’ experience of life and their readings. There was evidence of transfer of knowledge from other subject areas. Unlike in previous years when candidates scored less marks for Content on account of the paucity of ideas and lack of development of points, this year’s performance has revealed a great deal of improvement in this area.

B. A SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES’ WEAKNESSES

Candidates’ knowledge of basic grammar, tense and sentence construction was poor. In some cases you could not tell whether you were reading English or some other language.

Those candidates who managed to present something readable to some extent had their work marred with grammatical, tense and expressional errors. E.g. “He would went”, “He didn’t goes”, etc.

Some of the candidates resorted to all manner of sub-standard usage of the English Language and, even, sometimes outright vernacular (Twi) translation.

There were blatant errors of punctuation such as misuse of capital letters. There were also run-on sentences. One could see many one-sentence paragraphs of so many lines.

See also: BECE Candidates’ Weaknesses In Mathematics And Remedies | Extract From Chief Examiners Report For BECE 2023

C. SUGGESTED REMEDIES

Students should be assisted to cultivate the habit of reading good story books: not only for pleasure but also to identify and make use of literary devices used in the stories. Also there should be an organized and structured system of writing exercises aimed at equipping students with good writing skills.

Students should be encouraged to do supplementary reading both in and out of the classroom environment. Materials such as novels, library books, newspapers, comics, etc. could be of help. Nothing short of this can produce the proficiency in the use of idiomatic standard English that we expect from candidates at this level.

Candidates should also be made to partake in quizzes, debates and ‘spelling bees’ to sharpen their linguistic capabilities.

It the hope of our team that candidates will perform better when teachers and candidates go through this summary of strengths, BECE candidates’ weaknesses in English Language and remedies and apply same.

Source: waecgh.org

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