Students’ Perceptions of the use of English Language Courses in Enhancing Language Abilities

Abstract

The expectation that students integrate information from lectures and textbooks into the essays they produce, and that they demon strate the mastery of proper reading and writing skills warrants an investigation in to the manner in which English language courses are perceived by students towards the attainment of effective writing and reading skills. This paper set out to survey students’ perceptions of the Use of English Language courses in enhancing reading and writing abilities. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design and data were elicited from a questionnaire administered randomly to a sample of two hundred and eighteen (218) students within the University of Buea who took the Use of English language courses (ENG101/102for the 2017/2018 academic year). The instrument used for data collection in this study was a close-ended four-point Likert scale questionnaire. The findings indicate that a majority of the respondents (87.2%) hold that their motivation for taking the Use of English courses is based on the fact that it is a University Requirement. 80.79% revealed that they do not clearly understand why the courses are taught, still, 59.7% agree that the courses build language skills and influence academic growth. More specifically with regard to the influence of the course on writing skills improvement, 80.72% agreed to its positive impact. They think that the courses influence writing more than they influence reading and that in teaching reading emphasis should be laid on the observation of punctuation marks and on incorporating materials from their different academic programmes.