Candidates’ weaknesses
Candidates’ weaknesses were revealed in the three sections of the paper. These weaknesses included:
- Lack of expression to carry through their ideas;
- Poor understanding of the questions;
- Ignorance of the difference between ‘singular’ and ‘plural’; ‘present tense’ and ‘past tense’;
- Inability to construct meaningful sentences;
- Providing answers that have no relationship to the questions;
- Inability to re-state in the candidate’s own words, ideas contained in a passage;
- Ignorance of common literary terms;
- Ignorance of functions of clauses;
- Mindless lifting of portions of the set passages;
- Inability to replace words as used in the passage;
Suggested Remedies
Candidates should:
- learn the basic grammatical structures of English Language;
- acquaint themselves with the techniques for answering questions;
- inculcate the habit of reading wide with a view to improving their vocabulary;
- understand the demands of questions before answering them;
- practise essay writing regularly;