By Mela, Uchenna T. C.
The study was carried out to find out the interference of Igbo tense and aspect patterns in English Language usage among secondary schools students in Abuja. Gender and school exposure or experience was used to find the level of interference. Six research questions were formulated and four null hypotheses were stated to guide the study. Then, a review of related literature which was followed by ex-post-facto design was determined by Inter-Rater Reliability or Scorer Reliability. The population of the study was made up of JS I and SS II Igbo students that were 2520 and 1720 respectively in 138 schools. Simple random sampling was adopted where 150 students were randomly selected from 10 schools – 76 male students and 74 female students. Essay question was given as instrument for data collection. The instrument was face validated by four experts. Mean and standard deviation for research questions were used to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses. The Kendals W method was used to determine the entire reliability and the result showed that the reliability value for tense was .022 and reliability value for aspect was 0.17.