Enhancing Students’ Competence in the English Language Skills for Effective Communication

Abstract

This paper is a study on Communication Skills and the reasons for students’ poor acquisition of these skills. As evident in the works of some previous researches, students fail to adequately acquire the four communication skills: speaking, listening, writing and reading, which negatively affect their proficiency and effectiveness in communication and academic performance in the various courses they do in schools. English language skills are well designed, among other things, in the GSS101 and GSS102: Use of English1 and II that must be taught to every year one student of a higher institution. Among the reasons given for this deteriorating state of acquisition of communication skills include students’ negative attitude to lectures and examinations, wrong use of GSM phone, lecturer’s infidelity in teaching the use of English well and in the assessment of students’ assignments and examination scripts. The suggestions for a way out made in this paper revolve around the fact that lecturers should strive to inculcate in the students the basic communication skills. Students were also encouraged to develop the intentional desire to acquire these skills in order to communicate well using the accepted code as well as perform better in their academic works.