Teaching aspects of English sentences to second-language learners: a Nigerian example

This paper is informed by a study carried out among 720 randomly selected senior secondary school learners from 36 randomly selected secondary schools from the Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Lagos, Ondo and Ekiti States of Nigeria (Asiyanbola, 2003). Based on the employment of the elicitation techniques of six composition topics and a ten-item supply-response test, a large number of grammatical problems were identified from observations of the written language behaviour of the participants. The pupils experienced great difficulty in forming non-basic and non-simple sentences. A step-by-step presentation of English sentences is thus suggested: basic simple, non-basic simple and non-simple sentences. These could be incorporated into the grammar units of three common English language course books and the teaching syllabus used in Nigerian senior secondary schools. Moreover, essential points of grammar are also suggested, to be taught alongside each of the sentence types at various stages, since sentences cannot be taught in isolation.