The weaknesses observed include:

1. insufficient material to develop chosen essay topic;
2. wrong use of tenses and number;
3. lack of familiarity with the written word;
4. inability to re-state in the candidate’s own words, ideas contained in a passage;
5. poor knowledge of the parts of speech;
6. ignorance of common literary terms;
7. poor knowledge  of functions of clauses;
8. mindless lifting of portions of the set passages as answers;
9. use of text message abbreviations “dat” for “that”, “c” for “see”, etc.

1. SUGGESTED REMEDIES

1. Candidates should:
2. learn the basic grammatical structures of the English Language;
3.  inculcate the habit of reading widely with a view to improving their vocabulary;
4. converse regularly in simple, correct English;
5.  practise essay writing regularly;
6.  understand the demands of questions before answering them.
7. Schools should ensure that:
8. only qualified teachers  teach this subject;
9. class sizes are not unwieldy;
10. in addition to giving their students assignments frequently, teachers also  mark such assignments in order to help students identify and correct their mistakes;
11. teachers are exposed to workshops and seminars that would keep them abreast of global best practices in the teaching of the English Language.