By Kennedy Buhere
While releasing the results of the 2022 KCPE exams on December 21, 2022, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu expressed concern that English Composition Paper was among the subjects that recorded a drop in performance in 2022 KCPE.
I asked the head teacher of a primary school in Nairobi what she thought caused the poor and she confidently said it’s lack of practice in composition writing exercises.
I don’t agree with her reasoning: the learners didn’t perform well because they didn’t have sufficient writing practice.
English composition writing is not an isolated skill or activity. It is intertwined with reading, listening and speaking skills. Reading is a pivotal skill that all students need in order to succeed in school and in life. Together with writing, they define literacy, one of the foundational skills schools cultivate in learners.
The educational system of any society is founded on strong literacy, the ability to read and interpret print texts. Ease in reading results in good comprehension, extensive learning and enhanced enjoyment of what one is reading.
Extensive reading means reading that supports the acquisition of not just knowledge, but also the way that knowledge is conveyed in a language. A child who has been exposed to extensive reading doesn’t have any trouble expressing himself or herself on any issue within his experience.
Reading provides the mental outlook that enables one to approach any writing assignment. It also provides models of writing which invisibly influences one’s writing style, vocabulary, phrases and sentence structure.
Reading provides the raw materials from which writers draws inspiration on whatever topic or issue he/she is called upon to write.
What can schools do to help learners write acceptably well? Schools should make it a priority to increase the amount of time learners read books for leisure. Reading fiction and non-fiction books is a major source of knowledge about sentence structure, text structure, literary forms and topics ranging from the Holy books such as the Bible and the Koran, to current events.
Schools should develop a reading scheme for learners, right from grade I to grade 4. In educational jargon, a reading scheme is a series of books that are carefully structured to help children learn to read. The scheme is principally meant to help children learn to love and appreciate books.
Once the love for reading is attained, then provide a reading list. Let the school recommend reading resources, novels, poems, plays, letters, essays, speeches, reports, that will further deepen and broaden the knowledge and interests of learners, particularly those in grade five all the way to grade 12.
The books will help the learners see models of excellent writing style: the use of different types of sentence structures and paragraphing. They will see examples of narrative, descriptive, expository and argumentative writing discourses. They will see striking or rhetorical usage of language by accomplished writers. They will also see correct usage of English Language in terms of grammar, punctuation, idiomatic use of words and all other embellishment of English.
The dry teaching of grammar alone cannot expose learners to what English is capable of doing in compressing ideas, feelings and thoughts and sharing them.
A 12-year old boy who was interested in a career in law once wrote to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Felix Frankfurter, asking what texts on law he should study in order to be a competent lawyer, like Frankfurter no doubt was.
In his reply, Frankfurter said: “No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man. If I were you I would forget about any technical preparation for the law. The best way to prepare for the law is to be a well-read person. Thus alone can one acquire the capacity to use the English language on paper and in speech and with the habits of clear thinking which only a truly liberal education can give. No less important for a lawyer is the cultivation of the imaginative faculties by reading poetry, seeing great paintings, in the original or in easily available reproductions, and listening to great music. Stock your mind with the deposit of much good reading, and widen and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe and forget about your future career.
Stocking your mind with the deposit of much good reading is what enables one to write tolerably well.
Buhere is a Communications Officer, Ministry of Education
