Effects of Gender and School Location on the Ekiti State Secondary Schools Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension in English Language

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of gender and school location on the Ekiti State secondary school students achievement in reading comprehension in English language. The study adopted pre-test, post-test and control quasi-experimental research using two experimental groups and one control group. The sample for the study comprised 270 Senior Secondary class two students (SSSII) selected from nine public senior secondary schools  across the three senatorial district of the State using multi-stage sampling procedure that incorporated stratified random sampling and purposive sampling (with sex and location of school as stratification variables). The selected schools were assigned into three major groups, with each group made up of three schools of 30 students per school (two experimental groups and one control group). The instruments adapted for the study were: Morphological Production Task on Students’ Academic Ability (r = 0.74), Morphological Analysis Task of Students’ Academic Ability    (r = 0.83) and Achievement Test in Comprehension (0.75). Experimental group 1 and 2 were taught with (Problem-Solving and Eclectic methods) with Morphological Instructional Packages respectively; while Conventional Teaching Method Guide was used by the research assistants to teach the control group.  Data collected were analysed using Mean, Standard Deviation, Analysis of Covariance, (ANCOVA), Scheffe post-hoc and Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA). The study showed that there was no significant difference in the achievement of males and females between the experimental and control group. The study found that students in urban schools performed better than the rural schools in reading comprehension, inferring word meanings between the experimental and control groups. Based on the research findings, it was recommended that rural schools should be improved upon in terms of social facilities that could aid teaching. Also, students should be encouraged to read wide irrespective of school location and gender.

Keywords: Morphological Instructional Packages, Inferring Word Meanings, Reading Comprehension, Gender, School Location.