ABSTRACT
This study is investigating the role of the use of instructional materials on the teaching and learning of English language a case study of some selected secondary schools in Atiba local government area, Oyo state. Among the purpose of this study was to emphasize on the use of language laboratory in teaching English language especially phonetics and phonology in schools, also to know how the use of instructional materials like visual, audio visual and tapes helps in improving listening and speaking skills of Nigerian students. However, the result from the schools sampled shows that most secondary schools do not have language laboratory let alone of having enough teachers teaching English language in the school. Among the recommendations made were, teachers are implored to come to the aid of students by making proper use of instructional materials and employing suitable methods of teaching English language.
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
The use of instructional materials in the field of education can be traced back to the three stages of development in the history of educational technology namely, stone age, machine age and paper age. The concept of stone age dates back to the period when basic educational instructional materials consisted of the use of stone and tock During this stage, sticks, shells, seeds and cowries noticeable among others formed the counters.
Paper age is a stage that started before the first century A.D, by this period, hand act, wooden block, were in Asia as printing process, the first printed book was produced in 800AD. Further more with the development of printing machine by John Guttenberg of German in 1445, came a wider horizon in the history of this stage.
Machine age: Ofoeduna and Eya (1999) stated that this was the period of development in science and technology. This period can be called communication period because of the development in information generated retriever and transition that transmitted at lighting speed, this marks the period of introduction of satellites and computers into education system, radio, television and optic communication system become important in the classroom as a medium of instruction or instructional materials.
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The process of teaching cannot be meaningful until learners are able to understand what the teacher is imparting. Thus, in order for the teacher to make any meaningful impact in the teaching process, he has to adopt certain strategies. Among the strategies is the use of instructional materials.
Instructional materials include apparatus, textbooks, workbooks, charts, audio visual aids, chemical specimen act that is relevant, which will be used in a particular lesson in the classroom etc.
Instructional materials can be defined as the materials used by the teacher during the teaching and learning process to make the teaching understandable and more meaningful to the students.
According to key (1999) Instructional materials are those things which are intended to help the teacher to teach more effectively or better still, enable the students to learn. Instructional materials help the teacher in this work, but if the instructional materials are not used properly, they can do more harm than good. With the use of instructional materials in teaching and learning of English Language, the students are made to perform actively, while poor usage of instructional materials in teaching and learning to a large extent hinders student performance in English Language.
The importance of the use of instructional materials explained by Benedict (1998), Is that “children in most schools in Africa do not understand much of what the teacher teaches them, when they do not see clearly what they are suppose to learn or not given the opportunity to make use of knowledge they acquired then learning becomes non-functional.
From the above, it can be inferred that in order for learning to be functional and purposeful, it has to be done in a concrete way. This is where the use of instructional makes learning more effective.
The type of instructional materials to be used depend mainly on the nature of the lesson being taught. The problem of teaching can be attributed to the non-use of instructional materials. Experience and experiments have shown that the teaching learning process can not be effectively carried out without the use of instructional materials as visual experience.
A visual material will not only attract a child’s attention but will also be able to hold it in his memory for a long time, that is, learning will become permanent. It is recognized that learners will be able to grasp ideas better when there are some physical representations than ordinary verbal description.
Instructional materials also give members of a given class the opportunity to share an experience together which will lead to the development of skill and formations of positive attitude, opinion and value in relation to what is being observed, discussed with various learning abilities.
The use of instructional materials provides integrated experience, which may vary from concrete to abstract and has characteristics of reducing the note teaching. Those materials could be in form of cassette players, flannel board, flash cards etc. These could make English Language interesting to students and make them to acquire the knowledge concurrently.
The use of instructional materials can not be possible, if the government through the Ministry of Education do not make them available and when or where they are available, they should be well maintained and used.
Therefore, the problem of English Language teaching in senior secondary schools which cannot utilize aids effectively cannot be solved.
Instructional materials are categorized according to the types of sense they appeal to, in other words, we can categorize them into:
- Audio-Media: These are teaching devices that mostly appeal to the auditory sense. They consists of radio programmes, audio recordings such as cassette and disc-records.
- Visual Media: These are teaching and learning devices that have simple visual objects like pictures, diagrams, photographs, three dimensional objects, projected still picture such as slides, film-strips and transparencies.
- Audio-Visual Media: these are instructional devices that have the capacity to provide the features of audio and visual media simultaneously. Typical of a media in this category are television, video-taped programmes, recording sound films, film strips and slides, the synchronized sound.
Amongthese types of instructional materials mentioned, the one that is of immediate importance to us in this study is audio-visual media.
Teaching involves more than talking and use of talks all the time. There are various materials that explain better than any of the verbal explanation by the text of teaching learning.
Teaching materials are designed to facilitate learning and teaching, these materials appeal to the leaner’s sense of sight and hearing. It is obvious that students tends to forget what they are told but tends to remember the knowledge imported to them through the use of instructional materials
Psychology of learning has enlightened us on the idea that the retention of knowledge is highly enhanced 75% by sight, 15% by hearing organ and other sense organ such as touch, taste and smell share the remaining 10%. The sense of sight and hearing takes the highest percentages of all. This teaching materials cannot be without these two important sense of sight and hearing.
Balogun (1912), says we learn 10% through taste, 1.5% through feeling, 5% through smell, 11% through the sight applies to using the teaching materials for learners.
Weaver and Bolingers (1949), say teaching materials whether it be a model sketch, photograph, tape or the real thing itself, will establish in the mind of the students, the proper relationship of the various parts of verbal explanation in concept learnt.
Okpala (1980), confirms, that the instructional materials “are major means of improving clarity in communication diversity in method and forcefulness in appeal”. The intelligent use of instructional materials will help the teacher to solve this problem in the course of teaching English language. The teaching materials attract and hold attention to aid retention of information, concept and visual image.
In conclusion, the research will focus attention on the role of instructional materials on the teaching of English language in the senior secondary schools. It will also examine how often teacher use these materials and its effect on students learning.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Instructional materials are highly useful for effective teaching and learning of English language in senior secondary schools. Lack of adequate awareness of effectiveness of using instructional materials to teach, teacher’s attitude, competence and experience, role and rate of using instructional materials in teaching affect the academic achievement of students in English language. This major variable will guide the investigator in designing instrument and collecting relevant data for the study.
This study therefore, is an attempt to investigate into the roles of instructional materials in the roles of instructional materials in the teaching and learning of English language in selected secondary schools in Atiba local government area of Oyo state.
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to investigate into the role of instructional materials for the teaching of English language in selected secondary schools from Atiba local government area of Oyo state. Thus, how often teachers use these materials and its effectiveness to student learning is one of the areas of investigation.
Also, some of the purpose of the study are as follow:
- To identify the various instructional materials useful for effective teaching and learning of English language in senior secondary schools.
- To examine the importance of instructional materials in the teaching and learning of English language.
- To find out the usefulness of instructional materials by the teachers on the student’s academic achievement.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The findings of this study will be useful to the teachers, students, employers of labours, curriculum planners, ministry of education, school administrators and the nation at large. These will enable the teachers to improve on their method of teaching and strategies which in turn motivates the students during classroom activities. To the students use of instructional materials in the teaching of English language will act as a motivating factor for them to put their interest in English language classes. The employers of labour will be enabled to benefit from their employees in the aspect of English language both in teaching and writing. While the curriculum planners will be helped to put in place those missing link in the use of instructional materials and fill in the gap during curriculum planning. And on the part of the Ministry of Education as well as the school administrator the outcome of this study can help them discover and understand the importance of instructional materials and at the same time, it is a law for all the teacher of English language to start using instructional materials in teaching. The use of instructional materials in teaching and learning of English language will equally help to achieve an effective teaching of English language in secondary schools.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study is limited to selected senior secondary schools in Atiba local government area of Oyo state. The fewness of the sampled schools limited the extent to which any generalization can be made about results. Most students who have passed their senior secondary schools could be ascertain their failure in English language. Therefore, this research work is limited to some selected secondary schools in Oyo, a case study of Atiba local government area of Oyo state.
1.6 IMPORTANCE OF ENGLISH TO NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
English language is regarded as the world, famous language. It is the language of science and technology and a passport to educational advancement and prestigious employment as the language of commerce trade and administration as a means of national and international communication.
As important as English language is, it should be taught and learnt in our schools. English language in Nigeria appears indispensable to modern living and our children must be given maximum encouragement and opportunity to learn it effectively in our various schools in Nigeria.
According to Ubahakwe (1991), success in the language is the key to decent employment, admission to post primary instructions. Also, admission into university depends deeply on one’s performance in English language which is the medium of instruction from elementary to the university in Nigerian situations.
1.7 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
At the end of this study, the following research questions must have been answered.
- Does the poor educational finance affect the roles of instructional materials in teaching and learning of English language?
- Does insufficiency of instructional materials affect teaching and learning of English language?
- Does teacher’s poor knowledge and awareness of instructional materials affect the teaching of English language?
- Can teacher’s effective use of instructional materials enhance the performance of teachers in the classroom?
- Does instructional materials make teaching learning process of English language more interactive in secondary schools?
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
The following key words and concepts are defined by the researcher as used in the context of this study:
INVESTIGATION: This is an attempt to find out the truth about or cause of something.
MATERIALS: This refers to all the organization, such as television, radio, newspaper that serves as feedback for sender or those supporting materials that can motivate students to serve as effective ways to explaining and illustrating subject content.
INSTRUCTION: It is a planned organization of materials, facilities, equipment and human resources for learning.
TEACHING: It is a process of imparting knowledge using systematic approach that requires interaction between the teaching, learner and the learning materials.
LEARNING: It is a relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of experience.
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS: These are those materials that have educational content that are used in instruction to enhance the achievement of the instructional objectives.
LANGUAGE: This is a system of communication with written or spoken words, used by the people of a particular country or area.
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