Improving students’ achievement in essay writing: What will be the impact of mini-lesson strategy?

Chinwe A. Muodumogu^1* and Catherine Oyiza Unwaha²

¹Department of Curriculum and Teaching, Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria

²St Charles College, Ankpa, Kogi State, Nigeria

*Corresponding Authors E-mail: chitonia90@yahoo.com

Accepted 16 December, 2013

Abstract

This study focused on the impact of mini lesson strategy on senior secondary II students’ achievement in essay writing in Ankpa Local Government Area of Kogi State. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 342 students located in eight intact classes in four schools. The eight classes were randomized into experimental and control groups and where exposed to pre-test and post-test. The experimental group was taught essay writing using mini lesson strategy, while the control group was taught using the conventional method. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. Essay Achievement Test (EAT) consisting of four questions was used to collect data. Using Spearman Rank Order Correlation, the reliability of EAT was found to be 0.86. Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) standardized test was used to group the students according to their ability levels. ACER yielded reliability of 0.91 using Kuder- Richardson (21) formula. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and t-test at 0.05 alpha levels to test the hypotheses. Results revealed significant difference in the mean achievement scores between the experimental and the control groups (P= 0.001 < 0.5).  The study also revealed a significant effect of mini lesson strategy on students with high, average and low abilities (f_2,167=30-733 < 0.050). However, there was no significant difference in achievement across school location and gender.  It was, therefore, recommended among others that students should be exposed to mini lesson strategy to enhance their achievement in essay writing and the government and other professional bodies should encourage in- service training, seminars and workshops to expose teachers of English language to mini lesson strategy.

Keywords: Interactive lesson, skills development, modeling