CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

          Language is the basic tool of communication at home, among family members, in the community, in the society, at school or classroom, and in the world at large. It is a powerful tool for education and learning. French as a modern foreign language was introduced into the secondary school curriculum in Nigeria after the independence in 1960 (Bangbose, 1981). This was to facilitate communication within and outside Africa. Nigeria occupies a strategic geographical position in the sense that it is an Anglophone country surrounded by Francophone countries. There has to exist international understanding between neighbours and one of the means is through understanding of the two principal languages.

The federal government of Nigeria recognizes this importance of French language hence, she authorizes the teaching and learning of French in secondary schools. Unfortunately, the teaching of French language in Nigeria is being set-back by many problems. Some of these include: lack of teaching materials, inadequate number of teachers, poor teaching method, lack of incentives for teachers, linguistic interferences, negative attitudes of teachers and drop out of students after the junior classes.

 In their discussions on the problems of French teaching in Nigeria, Ikeme (1986) and Ajiboye (1994) present linguistic interference as one of the major problems facing the teaching of French language. The interference problem normally manifests in the students’ pronunciation of French words. This happens according to Ikeme (1986) when students encounter French sounds that exist in English and other Nigerian languages or when students encounter French words that have the same spelling in English but different pronunciation in French, for example, words like present, important, attention, enfant etc, create some difficulties in the development of oral fluency in the students’ spoken language. Ajiboye (1994) points out that because French linguistic system differs from those of English and Nigerian languages, students are often confused and they make a lot of errors in their essays and spoken French. Examples of such errors are as follows: “Je suis douze ans” (instead of “J’ai douze ans” – “I am twelve years old”); “Elle est froid” (instead of “Elle a froid” – “She is cold”), and so on.

          When students encounter such problems, they get discouraged and conclude that French is very difficult to learn. However, the solution to this problem of interference is found in constant practices with the language, considering its importance. Ojo, (2002) pointsout that after English, Spanish,Arabic and Portuguese, French language is the 5^th intercontinental world language in terms of number of its speakers found in all the five continents. The author further states that about 2.5% of the world’s six billion people speak it and also that French language is the second most important world language. English and French have a history of wide acceptance and usage in diplomatic, interpersonal business and socio-cultural relations all over the universe. Ojo (2002) affirms that the latter language has the second largest number of speakers in the European Union (EU) after German together with English and Arabic. About 150 French companies are operating in Nigeria such as: Total, Bouygues, Fourgerolle, Elf etc. So proficiency in French language would be a useful supplement to the professional qualifications and expertise that Nigerians need in order to be gainfully employed by these French companies in Nigeria.

          Further, it is in recognition of the importance of French language that Nigerian government gives support to the French Embassy in Nigeria to promote the teaching and learning of French in the country. They do so by sending outstanding teachers and students of French to some French speaking West African countries like Republic of Benin and Togo for refresher courses in French language and methodology. All these are aimed at enhancing teachers and students’ interest in French language.

French language is increasingly assuming a very important status in international circles. More countries of the world are either adopting French language as their second or official language. It is obvious, then, that the French language, today, remains firmly established as an official or working language of many major international institutions. It is one of the official languages of United Nations and is used as a working language by one third of the delegates, some from countries where French has no official status (Wikipedia, 2012). Considering these and other facts, Nigeria cannot afford to ignore the benefits that will accrue to her government and citizens if more of them are literate in French. She has to join the current trend in world politics and improve French language learning in her schools.

          The Nigerian Policy on Education (FRN, 2004: 19) stipulates that French language is to be taught as a core subject in junior secondary schools (JSS), while at the senior secondary school level, it becomes an elective subject. That is to say that, at this level, students individually decide whether to continue learning French language or not.It is at this point that some students withdraw. According to Onumajuru (2004), students say that French language is difficult to learn because of the discrepancies between its words and pronunciation on one hand, and the problem caused by gender and accord on the other hand. Onuko (2000) agree that there has been a downward trend in the learning of French language in our schools. They assert that there has been a growing loss of interest and enthusiasm among students towards French language which could be among the major causes of poor achievement in this subject. The West African Examination Council’s Chief Examiner’s report (2008) on French language showed that candidates did not show any remarkable improvement. Instead, many of them performed very poorly in short essay answer questions, used wrong accents, and failed questions on negation. A similar situation was also recorded in 2009 WAEC Chief Examiner’s report.

          Available evidence reveals that students have poorly achieved in French language over the years (WAEC, Examination Development Unit, 2004, 2008 and 2009) Achievement according to Hornby (2006:9) is “A thing that somebody has done successfully especially using his/her own effort and skill”. This shows that for achievement to occur, there must be personal efforts to it. In the WAEC Chief Examiners report (2008, 2009), it was stated that the students who took French language performed poorly in various aspects of the questions asked. In a nut shell, there was poor achievement because they may have lost interest in the study of the language.

          Interest is an important variable in learning because when one becomes interested in an activity, one is likely to be more deeply involved in that activity. Interest is a subjective feeling of intentness or curiosity over something (Habour-Peters, 2001). It is the preference for particular types of activities that is, the tendencies to look out for and participate in certain activities              (Agwagah, 1993). The poor achievement in French language may be indicative of the lack of interest by students. Any effort to tackle the problem of poor achievement in French language will prove abortive if the students’ interest is not taken into consideration. One way of doing this is to study the interest of the students. There is therefore the need to teach French language in an interesting manner in order to enhance the achievement of the students. Okorie (1986) notes that the zeal with which students enter into any learning activity is in directions of their interest in the particular activity. Students seem to learn more readily those things that appear interesting to them. That is why interest is a variable in this research, seeking to determine how the interest of the students in listening comprehension will be affected by the use of audio-cassette in instruction.

          In addition, another variable is the issue of gender. Gender is the condition of being male or female. There has been a divergent opinion on gender related issues in learning. However, there is a general notion that boys perform better than girls in the sciences and mathematics while girls excel in languages and arts subjects. In a study of factors affecting the success and retention of girls in sciences, Kahle (1985) observed that boys performed better than girls. In the same line Offorma (1990) in her studies on influence of teachers’ use of resources on students spoken French, reported that there was a significant mean difference in the spoken French of male and female students, with female students performing better than the male students.  However, Osakwe (2000) in her studies observed that there was no significant differential impact on male and female students’ achievement in the use-of- English.  Because of these contradictory discoveries this researcher considers gender as an important factor in this study. It is pertinent to find out whether listening with audio cassette is gender sensitive, and if so which gender is favoured. This will show through the performance of boys and girls in the listening comprehension activities and will thus reflect in their general performances in French language.    

In French, the population dwindles as they move to high class. This is when language learning becomes analytical and less intelligent students drop out of the subject (Offorma, 2009). In the same vein, Obiefuna (2002) ranks the following factors as being responsible for students drop out: teachers’ ineffectiveness, students’ inability to see any practical utility in the study of French language, inadequacy of the number of teachers and fear of failure. It is observed that this is still the situation even now. However, research findings (Reyhner, 1998) show that the difficulties associated with the learning of French language may not be unconnected with the methods employed in the teaching of the language. This is in line with the observations by Offorma (1990).

          Several methods have been employed in the teaching of French which include: The Grammar Translation method, the Audio-lingual method, the Audio-Visual method, the direct method and more recently, the Communicative approach. Conventional and others, all these methods seemed not to have been able to excite the students enough and retain their interest in the language as students have achieved poorly in oral communication. According to Reyhner (1998:5)

Students who have passed four years of high school French have gone to Paris and been unable to talk to people on the street because they have not learned enough French through the traditional methods of foreign language teaching. This inability of students to speak the language that they were taught was somewhat understandable when language focuses on teaching grammar and having students do translations. With the advent of tape recorders and language laboratories in the 1960s, students could only produce memorized dialogues. However, there was a little improvement in the 1970s with the communicative methods, but there were lots of errors in the students spoken French.

It is evident that these methods enumerated above have not helped students much to improve in oral communication as was expected. At this point one wonders if this lack of achievement could also be attributed to improper or inadequate attention to the language skills.

          The language skills are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. They are interrelated because a lack in one indirectly affects performance in the other. Listening is the first skill encountered both in language acquisition and in language learning. Before speech is attained, listening must have taken place. Listening is the act of hearing with attention. Azikiwe (1998) defines listening ashearing with comprehension.It has very close links with the other language skills, namely, speaking, reading and writing skills

          Speech is said to be primordial in language learning; but without listening it may not be achieved. The same thing applies to reading. One cannot read without having gone through listening. Obanya (2002) defines reading as a process of interpreting a written language and translating it into words. For one to be able to read, one must have listened to the pronunciation of the letters and of the words or listened to the pronunciation of the words. Listening therefore, plays a part in one’s ability to read.

          Writing is the art of putting down information, thought, feeling or ideas on a surface for retrieval and reference purposes. Writing is also closely linked to listening for without acquiring the sound of the letters of the alphabet, through listening and through learning of words spellings, writing will be difficult. For example, in the aspect of dictation, if one had not earlier learnt word spellings and sounds through listening and looking, one would not be able to write the word when one hears it or want to write letters. So, it is clear that listening is linked to writing.