The Effect of Project Method On the Students Achievement in English Essay Writing

ABSTRACT The purpose of this work was to examine the effects of project method on the achievement of SSII students in Essay Writing in Awgu Education zone of Enugu state. Five research questions and five null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Quasi-experimental non-randomized control group pre-test posttest design involving intact classes was the research design adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all SSII students in Awgu education zone of Enugu state. Multi-stage sampling technique was used because the study involved different levels. Purposive sampling was used to get four co-educational schools, 300 SSII students were used for the study. Essay Writing was used to collect data on students’ achievement in essay writing. The instrument was face-validated by two senior lecturers in the Arts and Science Education Departments in Faculty of Education and one WAEC examiner. Pilot study was carried out using 30 students from two schools within the zone and to test the reliability of the instrument, inter-rater reliability was sought using Kendall coefficient of concordance Mean and SD scores were used to answer the research questions. The (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses formulated for the study at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings showed that: project method had significant effect on students’ mean achievement in English essay writing; male students achieved higher than female students in English essay writing; there was no significant effect of gender on the mean achievement of students on essay writing when taught using project method; students in urban location achieved higher than those in the rural location; there was significant interaction effect of teaching method and gender on students’ achievement in English essay writing and there was also no significant interaction effect of teaching method and school location on students’ mean achievement in English essay writing. Based on these findings some recommendations were made: that English teachers should endevour to teach English language generally using project method; government in conjunction with other professional association should organize workshops, seminars, conferences and in-service training to inform and train English teachers on the use of project method; the teacher training institutions should restructure special methodology course to include project method in teaching school subjects such as the English language; the curriculum planner should incorporate project method in teacher education programmes and textbook writers especially in the English language should include instructions and illustrations on the use of project method in their text books.