The Future of Education

Language is the nucleus of communication. Without it, no meaningful interaction can take place. Learning on the other hand, is the exchange of knowledge among individuals through communication, oral or written. However, the written composition of secondary school students is scarcely proficient. Thus, this study examined the use of syntactic features in the written composition of secondary school students. The features explored were mechanics, concord and parallelism. Two hundred students were randomly selected from ten secondary schools in Ejigbo Local Government Area, Osun State, Nigeria. The study was premised on Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory which states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction. An essay test was conducted for the students to assess their abilities in written composition. After careful analysis of the students’ essays, it was revealed that most of the students have problems with capitalization, spelling and the use of punctuation. Deficiency in the use of concord is another noticeable syntactic flaw. A large number of the students were guilty of unbalanced subject-verb relation. The analysis also showed a lot of non-parallel constructions in the students’ essays. It was recommended that for students to effectively communicate their ideas through written composition, adequate attention should be given to the teaching of capitalization, spelling, punctuation, concord, parallelism and other syntactic concepts. Ample opportunities should be granted students to engage in writing exercises, both in the classroom and at home. Teachers should give feedback to the students on their performances in written composition and employ error-analysis strategy to re-teach the identified syntactic errors.

Keywords: Grammar; Language teaching; Education; Composition; Social learning theory