POOR USAGE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN SCHOOLS...Qualified teachers not teaching (PAGE 11)

THE Director–General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Samuel Bannerman–Mensah, has challenged teachers to devise mechanisms that will effectively address the poor standard of the English Language in schools.
He said the problem had arisen because qualified teachers were not teaching the subject, resulting in most of the candidates being unable to express themselves clearly and logically.
Mr Bannerman-Mensah also attributed the poor standard of English at all levels in the country partly to the large numbers of students in a class at a particular point in time, making it very difficult for teachers to set and mark assignments as frequently as possible, to help students identify their mistakes and correct them.
The Director–General expressed these sentiments at a workshop attended by directors of education in the Ashanti Region, school heads and English Language teachers.
Participants brainstormed with a view to coming out with a blueprint that would address the problem to enable students to understand the rudiments of using both written and spoken English correctly.
The workshop was the second in a series to be organised by the GES nation-wide to build the capacity of teachers of English to make them more proficient to enhance teaching and learning of the subject.
Mr Bannerman-Mensah observed that reports from the Chief Examiner of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) over the past couple of years indicated a low standard of performance in English Language, both written and spoken.
He said the report also spoke volumes of "mechanical inaccuracies and that about 80 per cent of the candidates scored zero for the mechanical accuracy, which expressed their weakness in grammar, particularly tenses and their sequence, as well as concord and agreement".
The Director-General noted that since one of the highlights of the Education Reform was to improve literacy, numeracy and problem-solving among children in basic schools, they sincerely believed that the attainment of a certain level of proficiency in language, especially English, would improve performance.
A former Chief Examiner, Professor Naa Afarley Sackeyfio, said it was time to address the falling standard of the English Language.
"The problem has gotten to a stage where students at the basic schools can neither use idioms to express themselves nor differentiate between transitive and intransitive verbs,” she lamented.
She said the situation was not different at the second cycle and tertiary levels and was even trickling down to their workplaces after graduating from school.
Prof. Sackeyfio pointed out that students were not developing the culture of reading because they were not being encouraged by their teachers to read the right materials.
She noted that teachers had also restricted themselves to the use of only textbooks to teach students instead of encouraging them to use other materials that could supplement the textbooks.
A former Headmaster of the TI Ahmadiyya Senior High School, Mr I. K. Gyasi, advised teachers to always use dictionary and encourage their students to learn to use them.
This, he said, would enable them to build their vocabulary and improve their grammar.