Publication:

Challenges students face in academic achievement of the English subject in secondary schools in Thika town sub-county Kiambu county, Kenya

This study sought to find out the challenges students face in Academic achievement of the English subject in secondary schools in Thika Town Sub County, Kiambu County. The study found out some of the challenges students face in academic achievement of the English subject and this was viewed in four broad perspectives that is: in listening skills, speaking, writing and reading. When a student is not able to perform well in one skill, the other three skills are affected and hence he or she is not able to perform in the English subject. An English language learner may be having a problem in concentrating in class leading to him/ her, missing out important information, having a poor handwriting, limited vocabulary or even misspelling words these are some of the challenges that the study looked into and came up with appropriate solutions. The researcher used the Communicative Competence theory, in the research study in investigating how the English learning skills are essential to the academic achievement of the English subject. The data was analyzed using case study design and presented in tables and figures. The data was collected in November 2015, using questionnaires. The sample was selected randomly from the target population and consisted of two hundred students in five secondary schools. Various challenges were encountered during data collection for instance: there were limited documents for analysis in obtaining research information : limited documents for analysis in obtaining in research information, there was limited time while carrying out the research in the field and also some participants did not fully cooperate in answering the questionnaires. The study concluded that, the different challenges that learners encounter in the four English learning skills, highly affect their academic achievement. Finally, the researcher also recommended the possible solutions in order to improve the academic achievement of the students in the English subject. For instance: The Students ought to familiarize themselves with different vocabularies in order to be able to know any term that the teacher can say while dictating down words, the teacher should slow the rate of his/her speech and prolong vowels to model slow-easy speech also, the students should read progressively longer segments of reading material to build comprehension skills and finally, Students should practice writing and have them indicate which should be capitalized.