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;