CONCORD PROBLEMS ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN IKA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, AKWA IBOM STATE

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

The problem of concord agreement among English speakers is becoming more obvious and rampant, cutting across various educational levels, right from primary to the university level. Many students speak and write without obeying the rules of concord agreement. The most worrisome dimension of the problems is that it extends beyond school level to advanced speakers of English Language such as lecturers at various levels, some honourable members of the state and national assemblies and the interest (McGrath, 2014).

Concord Problems on English Language in Selected Secondary Schools

In the past ten years, a burgeoning research based has increasingly shown that proper use of concord rules are among the most important players influencing students’ achievement outcome (Goldhaber and Sanders, 2012). For example state that the single largest factor affecting students’ achievement is improper use of concord in grammar.

Wright and Hon (2007) also believe that more can be done by improving the quality of teachers training education in English Language (who are experts in phonology, detection of poor grammatical structures both in written and spoken English). Concord refers to the agreement between the subject and the verb. The idea of concord agreement is an important aspect of language which many students commit (Shyer and Adey, 2001). The author stated that some researchers complained that they have read and heard expressions such as “they does”, “I does”, which was written and spoken by students from tertiary institutions. These sentences look mature and contain clear message but they are wrong because they violate the rule of concord agreement.

Concord Problems on English Language in Selected Secondary Schools

According to Otavio (2003), if you want to assess the extent to which your students have truly internalized concord agreement rules, you must test low consistent they are getting the third person’s right in spontaneous communication across a range of problems, as isolated instance probably will not tell much.

Errors in concord problems is becoming widely spread and it seems as if many people are either not aware of it or they consider it as less important as it does not affect the message being conveyed. But it violates the rule, just as in the human society, any violation of an important rule becomes a problem to worst mistakes, one can make mistakes in oral and written performance in English language is caused by lack of agreement between word in the sentence and coherent writing can never fulfill it good condition without concord problems.

Anyone who speaks English language fluently and does not violate the rules of concord is respected as good users of the language as one who has good control of the language. Therefore this seeks to address the ugly trend of concord problems which spreads among secondary students.