Socio-Economic Effects on Students’ Essay Writing Performance under Selected Teaching Strategies in Senior Secondary Schools in Ondo State Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on students’ performance in essay writing after using Reading-writing, Think-Pair-share, a Combination of TPS and RW strategies and the conventional method in secondary schools in Ondo State Nigeria. The study adopted a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test four-group design as well as a descriptive survey-type design. The population for the study comprised all the 25,297 public Senior Secondary School (SSS) II students of the 2019/2020 Session in Ondo. The sample for this study was 308 SSS II students who were selected from public senior secondary schools, using a multi-stage sampling procedure. The instruments used for this study are a questionnaire on Students’ Socio-economic Background Status (SSBS) and the Essay Writing Performance Test (EWPT). The EWPT was a standardized WAEC past question while the SSBS was validated by experts in the Arts and Language Department, Faculty of Education, Ekiti State University. The reliability of the EWPT was established through the test re-test method and the reliability coefficient of 0.70 was obtained. The reliability of the questionnaire was established by subjecting the score from a single administration to the Cronbach Alpha Reliability Co-efficient test. The instrument was found reliable as the calculated value was 0.82. The data collected for this study were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The hypothesis was tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The finding of this study revealed that after being instructed with different strategies in SSS in Ondo State, there was no significant difference in the performance of students from different SES in essay writing.