USING THE WRITING WORKSHOP TO IMPROVE READING

The study investigated the effect of using the writing workshop to improve reading in senior secondary school students. Most public schools in Nigeria do not explicitly teach reading or writing to students, hence most of these students have poor reading and writing competences. This study applied the writing workshop strategy (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001) to teach reading to a small group of secondary school students in a rural community in Ezinihitte, Mbaise, near Owerri, South East Nigeria. The study employed the qualitative method of participant observation. A comparison of students’ reading and writing performance before and after the study showed that the treatment had a positive effect on the reading and writing competences of the subjects. It was concluded that using the writing workshop to teach students who are being prepared for the senior secondary school certificate examinations to actively read and write in the English language will go a long way to improve their competence in both reading and writing the language. It is recommended that both the government and all stakeholders should adopt this strategy alongside other useful ones to improve the performance of students in internal and external examinations.  Article visualizations

IMPACT OF ECLECTICISM ON NIGERIAN ESL LEARNERS’ COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

This study adopted three practical teaching strategies intended to positively affect learners’ writing skill while neutralising negative factors affecting their writing competence. To achieve the study objective which aimed at the assessment of the best teaching strategy to enhance learners’ writing proficiency, a comparative study of three teaching methods (namely communicative, eclectic and task-based methods) was used over a 6-week period as a treatment on three experimental groups A, B, C respectively and a control group (D) was taught using the conventional method. A pre-test was administered on two hundred (200) freshmen/subjects purposively selected from different Departments at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO). A post-test was used to ascertain the outcome of the six weeks period of treatment on their essay writing. Results varied according to groups but, most importantly, Group B showed very significant improvement and control group D showed no significant improvement at all in the post-test assessment while groups A and C’s writing ability improved just marginally at best post-test. Our findings suggest the need to pay attention to eclectic teaching techniques as a crucial element in enhancing writing proficiency among learners. The implications and limitations of this research in addition to guidelines for future research are discussed.  Article visualizations

The effectiveness of story retelling on junior high school students’ reading comprehension and writing

The poor performance of Nigerian students in the English language, both in internal and external examinations, poses a challenge to scholars of reading. This study sought to find out if story retelling as a technique of teaching reading comprehension and writing will in any way affect the ability of Junior Secondary School (JSS 3) students to comprehend text, retell given stories as well as improve their writing. The quasi experimental method was used to conduct the study. Eighty subjects in two junior secondary schools in Owerri, East of Nigeria, were grouped into Experimental and Control groups. Both groups were taught the same content of the school syllabus; the period of instruction was the same for both. However, while the Control group was taught using the conventional method, the Experimental group was taught through the use of story reading and retelling. At the end of the treatment, a post-test was administered on both the Control and Experimental groups. The transactional theory of learning which sees reading and writing as personal meaning-making processes was used to guide the study. The scores of students from their written retellings constituted the data and were analyzed using means and standard deviation. It was found that the performance of students (both Control and Experimental) in the pre-test were within the same range. But there was a marked difference between the performance of the Control and Experimental groups in the post-test. Noticeably, the Experimental group performed better in the post-test than in the pre-test, as well as better than the Control Group. The paper therefore concluded that the story retelling strategy was effective in improving the comprehension, retelling and writing of students

Gender Differences and the Writing Achievement of University Fresh Students: A study of Federal University of Technology Owerri

Gender differences have often been identified as being manifest in the performance and achievement of students in their academic activities. Male students are said to be more productive in science and technology courses, while female students are said to be better than the males in humanities and non-numerate disciplines. Therefore, in this paper, the gender similarities hypothesis (Hyde, 2005) was used to examine whether gender would make any significant difference between the writing achievements of newly admitted university undergraduates in Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. The pre-test, post-test, control group quasi-experimental method was employed, using a total number of 425 students in three experimental groups and one control group. At the end of the treatment of the experimental groups, the pre-test and post-test scores of male and female students were analyzed as data. It was found that there was no significant difference between the achievement of male and female participants. Therefore, it was concluded that there are no gender differences found in the writing achievement of male and female undergraduates but that students who apply themselves to their studies would excel irrespective of their gender

Ofatumumab versus Teriflunomide in Multiple Sclerosis

BACKGROUND: Ofatumumab, a subcutaneous anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, selectively depletes B cells. Teriflunomide, an oral inhibitor of pyrimidine synthesis, reduces T-cell and B-cell activation. The relative effects of these two drugs in patients with multiple sclerosis are not known. METHODS: In two double-blind, double-dummy, phase 3 trials, we randomly assigned patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis to receive subcutaneous ofatumumab (20 mg every 4 weeks after 20-mg loading doses at days 1, 7, and 14) or oral teriflunomide (14 mg daily) for up to 30 months. The primary end point was the annualized relapse rate. Secondary end points included disability worsening confirmed at 3 months or 6 months, disability improvement confirmed at 6 months, the number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions per T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, the annualized rate of new or enlarging lesions on T2-weighted MRI, serum neurofilament light chain levels at month 3, and change in brain volume. RESULTS: Overall, 946 patients were assigned to receive ofatumumab and 936 to receive teriflunomide; the median follow-up was 1.6 years. The annualized relapse rates in the ofatumumab and teriflunomide groups were 0.11 and 0.22, respectively, in trial 1 (difference, -0.11; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.16 to -0.06; P<0.001) and 0.10 and 0.25 in trial 2 (difference, -0.15; 95% CI, -0.20 to -0.09; P<0.001). In the pooled trials, the percentage of patients with disability worsening confirmed at 3 months was 10.9% with ofatumumab and 15.0% with teriflunomide (hazard ratio, 0.66; P = 0.002); the percentage with disability worsening confirmed at 6 months was 8.1% and 12.0%, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.68; P = 0.01); and the percentage with disability improvement confirmed at 6 months was 11.0% and 8.1% (hazard ratio, 1.35; P = 0.09). The number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions per T1-weighted MRI scan, the annualized rate of lesions on T2-weighted MRI, and serum neurofilament light chain levels, but not the change in brain volume, were in the same direction as the primary end point. Injection-related reactions occurred in 20.2% in the ofatumumab group and in 15.0% in the teriflunomide group (placebo injections). Serious infections occurred in 2.5% and 1.8% of the patients in the respective groups. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with multiple sclerosis, ofatumumab was associated with lower annualized relapse rates than teriflunomide. (Funded by Novartis; ASCLEPIOS I and II ClinicalTrials.gov numbers, NCT02792218 and NCT02792231.)