THE ROLE OF TEACHERS IN TEXTBOOK EVALUATION: NEW EFFECTIVE ENGLISH COURSE FOR SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 1-3 A CASE STUDY OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN KANO STATE

Abstract

English Language in Nigerian schools be it advanced or ordinary level of education has suffered a setback in recent years in terms of its usage. Students of Senior Secondary Schools in most of the local governments from whom adequate and background proficiency in English is expected, cannot for instance, produce or construct a well-structured and error free sentence in English. It is appalling and indeed embarrassing to listen to, or read students’ essays at the Senior Secondary School level today, with gross misuse and abuse of language. The aim of the study investigates the adequacy of a language teaching material (textbook), with special reference to the New effective English course for Senior Secondary Schools 1-3 ( written in line with the New NERDC 9 year basic education curriculum) using some Senior Secondary Schools in the Kano State Local Governments as a case study. It is worrisome because, Senior Secondary Students cannot speak English correctly even after they had been taught the English language. These are students supposed to obtained the basic rudiments of the language that are required to obtain a minimum qualification requirement for gaining admission into higher institutions at the foundation level in Nigeria. The study is anchored on Vygotsky (2012), theoretical framework, which states that learning occurs through social interaction within the zone of proximal development (ZPD) that is a good ESL textbook scaffolds learners’ language development and encourages collaboration, dialogue, and mediated learning. Finding shows that a good language textbook enhances appropriate spoken skills, and lack of appropriate evaluation of the teaching material results to poor usage. It makes recommendations towards ameliorating the problem by teachers playing adequate textbook evaluation.