The Use of Auxiliary Verbs by Nigeria Certificate in Education (N.C.E) Students: A Case Study of Federal College of Education (FCE), Kano

Abstract

English Language in Nigerian tertiary institutions has suffered a setback in recent years in terms of its usage. Students of higher education from whom high level of proficiency is expected, cannot for instance, construct error free sentences.

It is appalling and indeed embarrassing to listen to, or read students’ essays at the tertiary level today, with gross misuse and abuse of language. This paper as a survey, is therefore trying to find out the causes of such abuse and misuse of language with special reference to auxiliary verbs. It has been observed that NCE students in Colleges of Education using FCE, Kano as a case study, cannot use these verbs correctly even after they had taken General English courses. It is worrisome because NCE is the minimum qualification requirement for teaching at the foundation level (primary school) in Nigeria. The paper states the background of the study, the problem, research questions, objectives of the study and theoretical frame work on which the study is based. It goes further to review some related literature, states the methodology and finally presents data analysis and discussion of the findings. The findings reveal that a combination of factors accounted for the misuse of these auxiliary verbs, such as over generalization of grammatical rules, mother tongue interference, poor teaching of these verbs among others. It makes recommendations towards ameliorating the problem.

Key Words: Auxiliary verbs, tertiary institutions, errors, NCE students