Reasons why most of students are incompetent in English language.

English language is widely spoken all over the world, it is used as one among of the foreign language and as second language in many countries. English language is used as a medium of instruction in many African's secondary schools, and it is used as a subject in both primary and secondary schools. However secondary school students are completed their secondary schools education level with poor written and speaking English language due to different reasons. The following are common reasons for why these learners are incompetent in English language, such as follows:-

The following are the reasons for students being incompetent in English Language.

These reasons are based much in non-native countries especially, African countries, like Tanzania.

Lack English language teachers

• Despite the government effort to hire more teachers every year, still the numbers of English language teachers are small. This make the emphasis on teaching English language being poor as you may find that, the school with about 500 students or more has only one or two English language teachers. This tends to make the teacher feel over burden having all large number of students. And this will make teaching activities difficult to teachers as they can’t be able to teach effectively due to the large numbers of students. English language need more exercise for the learner to be competent, that is learners should do more quizzes and exercise, there fore having a large number of students with fewer teachers make the teaching activities being hard, as a results learners become incompetent.

Teachers incompetence’s

• This means that, there are some teachers who are not competent in English Language, this may be due to the several reasons, but one among of the reason is teachers background and or the reason mentioned above, that is ,teachers came from incompetent teachers they can not also be competent. This may results into learners’ incompetence’s.

 Another reason is frequency use of local languages including Swahili in school

• That is learners spend their much time speaking their vernacular languages rather than English Language, this may be due to the school poor supervision and poor English speaking program implementation at school. There fore the less the learner practice speaking English language, the less competent they become.

Lack of English language books and publications at schools

• This is one among of the reason for why English learners in these school are incompetent, this is because learners are not getting many publication and English books to make them learn from them. Example you may find out that the class of 50 students, only 10 or less books are available. This obvious will result into learners incompetency.

Source

Poor English language program supervision at school

• That is most of school establish several plans at school to make learners speak English language, these plans include, morning speech where by learners or students required to produce speech at school , every morning at assemble. Debate, school plan for school debate to make the students learn English through debating, essay writing competitions at school and so on, all these programs meant to make students being competency, however things are quiet different as these programs are initiated but no one cares about them, most of schools leave the students to carry these programs on their own, as a result of poor implementations of what has planned by the school, hence students complete their studies empty handed in English language.

Lack of cooperation among teachers

• There is a belief to some teachers that the issue of speaking English language to the student is all about English teachers duty and other English teachers are not even concerned, some teachers they cant even pay attentions to they students and some of them tend to discourage students from not using English language, example you may find a teacher tell a student that “English is foreign language, it came with airplane” don’t ever use it when you are with me. These are obvious discouraging words, and they show that there is not cooperation among teachers at a certain school. This will results into negative perception to learners as a learner is already discouraged by the teacher.

English to be used as the medium of instructions in secondary schools and higher learning institutions.

• That is, in Tanzania, English is used as a subject in primary level, where by Swahili language is used as a medium of instructions in primary schools, while English language is used as a subject and also as the medium of instruction in secondary schools and higher learning institutions. There fore in this case its obvious that the base of English language to the learners will be poor as they were supposed to use English language as the medium of instructions from primary schools. This could have built their good foundation of speaking English Language.