An Assessment of Secondary School Teachers’ Knowledge of Proverb in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

Proverbs are an aspect of culture cherished all over the world and preserved in language which is the medium for expressing them. Also, proverbs have psychological, cosmological and socio-cultural roots. They make special demands from the decoder, as their interpretations usually require more than sheer linguistic processing. The philosophical and didactic implications of proverbs make them quite useful for the teaching of, especially language, at any level of education. However, many factors, including teacher knowledge could affect the use of proverbs in the teaching-learning process. Thus, a study was carried out to find out if teachers of the English Language in Secondary Schools in Ilorin, Nigeria possessed any knowledge of proverbs, and whether their knowledge (or lack of knowledge) reflected some teacher and school-related variables. The study involved 120 teachers randomly selected from 30 secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis. A researcher designed instrument comprising two sections (the one seeking demographic information, and the other, a test of proverbs) was administered to the subjects for the study. Frequency count and percentage were used in answering the four research questions posed for the study. It was found that teachers had knowledge varied on the bases of gender, qualification and experience. Based on the findings, recommendations and suggestions were made. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p277