PERCEPTION OF TEACHERS ON THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE TEACHING OF ESSAY WRITING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ONUEKE EDUCATION ZONE OF EBONYI STATE

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore perception of teachers on their attitude toward the teaching of essay writing in Onueke Education zone of Ebonyi State. Three research questions and a null hypothesis guided the work. Questionnaire was used as the instrument. A trial test was carried out and tested for reliability and a value of 0.75 was obtained from the test. The instrument was further subjected to face validation. Language teachers – English, Igbo and French totaling 374 drawn from 59 secondary schools served as the population and out of this number, 120 language teachers – 60 males and 60 females were selected using simple random sampling technique. All the responses on the three research questions indicated that although essay writing is very important in the intellectual development of students, yet most teachers’ exhibit non-challant attitude in teaching essay writing. These poor attitudes were discovered to be as a result of the complex nature of essay writing, high students/teacher population and non-motivation of teachers. The hypothesis showed that significance difference does not exist in the perception of both male and female language teachers. It was suggested that teachers should offer selfless services and take the teaching of essay writing very seriously using better instructional strategy. Also the government should motivate the teachers and employ more teachers to lessen the burden of language teachers.