COMPETENCIES POSSESSED BY ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS FOR EFFECTIVE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NSUKKA EDUCATION ZONE.

The general purpose of this study was to find out the level of competencies possessed by English language teachers for effective teaching of English language in secondary schools. The study was guided by six research questions and five null hypotheses. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The study was carried out in Nsukka Education Zone of Enugu state. The population of the study comprised all the 151 English language teachers. All the population was used as sample. The instrument used for data collection was a researcher-structured questionnaire entitled; English Language Teacher’s Competence Questionnaire (ELTCQ). The questionnaire was structured on a four point scale of highly competent (4 points), competent (3 points), fairly competent (2 points) and not competent (1point). To ensure the validity of the instrument, the researcher subjected the instrument to face validation by three experts. The experts scrutinized the instrument in terms of relevance, clarity, usability and suitability of the items in eliciting the required information from the respondents. Their correction and suggestions were used in the production of the final version of the instrument. The reliability of the instrument was established by administering 20 copies of the instrument to English language teachers in the senior secondary schools in Obollo-Afor Education Zone which is outside the study area. The teachers have similar characteristics as those in the population of this study. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the estimate of internal consistency of ELTCQ which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.86. The questionnaire was administered by the researcher with the help of 4 research assistants. All the research questions formulated for this study were answered using mean scores. The criterion mean for accepting or rejecting any item was 2.50. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using the t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The result of the study among others showed that teachers’ qualification and experience are significant predictors of teachers’ competency in teaching English Language. The implications of the above findings were examined and it was recommended among other things that teachers’ qualification and experience should be considered by employers of labour in the course of teachers’ recruitment and employment. This will help to employ only teachers who are qualified to teach English Language. The limitations of this study were highlighted and suggestions were made for further studies.