STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ORAL ENGLISH IN NIGERIAN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

Attitude whether positive or negative, is an important phenomenon in teaching and learning which could be a determinant to success or failure in learning. This research investigates students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning of Oral English in Nigerian tertiary institutions. The study was guided by three objectives: to investigate how students’ attitudes affect teaching and learning of Oral English, to examine the factors for negative attitudes of students towards teaching and learning of Oral English and to find out the impact of students’ negative attitudes towards teaching and learning of Oral English. It adopts a simple sampling technique in gathering data from selected departments in Mountain Top University. 100 students were randomly selected as respondents. Frequency counts and simple percentage scores were used in analyzing the data. The analysis of data revealed that students’ negative attitudes affect teaching and learning of Oral English. The study concludes that students are not familiar with sound spectrograph used in the Language Laboratory and they do not use their pronunciation dictionary during and after the Oral English classes. The studentsshow confidence expressing themselves in writing than in speaking, they are better listening to Oral English than transcribing and usually perform poorly in the Oral English test might have prompted their negative attitudes towards learning of Oral English. This research therefore recommends that the teachers should monitor and encourage the students to constantly refer to the pronouncing dictionary to aid pronunciation and speaking proficiency for excellent performance, the students should also learn to transcribe the Oral English sounds rather than listening to them alone, the Oral English teacher should instill speaking confidence in the students when expressing themselves rather than confidence in writing alone, university boards should make it mandatory for students offering Oral English courses to have a pronunciation dictionary used in and after the class to improve student’ language proficiency and good academic performance and the government and stakeholders in education sector should implement policy on availability and utilization of sound spectrograph in all schools from primary to university level where languages, especially English language are taught or used as medium of instruction so students will be familiar with it.