Why 2024 BECE candidates will fail the English Language exam

Do you want to fail the 2024 English Language Exam? If not, then read this and take corrective action now.

I am not writing as a doomsday prophet but as a worried examiner, and English Language teacher with over 20 years teaching experience.

While teachers, parents, candidates, and everyone else is gearing up for the BECE this year, I must be frank with you and say that most 2024 BECE candidates will fail the English language paper easily.

This conclusion is based on careful observation and examination of the scripts of candidates who have passed our examinations in the last four months. Although we have corrected all candidates who have assessed our examinations, we remain concerned as many candidates continue to make dangerous mistakes in answering questions.

Let’s carefully examine the reasons why I believe the English BECE exam failure in 2024 will be significant and discuss the measures that schools, candidates, and English teachers can take to prevent any potential disaster on July 8, 2024, between 9 a.m. and noon, when the English language paper will be written nationwide.

Poor time management is a major problem for many candidates preparing for the BECE this year. They must respond to questions under Composition, Comprehension, and Summary/Literature in Section B.

If you have not trained your candidates to write a good essay in 15 to 20 minutes as an English teacher, it is time to sit up. If you spend more than 20 minutes writing an essay as a candidate, you must sit up.

With a month and a few days until the 2024 BECE, candidates are mixing up formal letter features with informal letter features when writing informational letters, and vice versa.

The BECE will not forgive such errors.

In your salutation, write the full name of the pen pal instead of just the first name. is totally wrong, yet that is what candidates are doing.

Instead of writing Hello Kojo, students are writing Hello Kojo Asante.

In informal letters, candidates often write Sincerely, followed by a comma, and then simply write their first name on the next line. Many students tend to write their full names after yours, instead of just their first name. Teachers should emphasise to their candidates the importance of using their full name for official correspondence, as some candidates also use it for informal correspondence.

Again, it is very disturbing to see BECE candidates with less time on their side introducing their signatures in informal or friendly letters. This is wrong. Some of these mistakes are easy to avoid if candidates know that a friendly letter is the same as a letter to a pen pal, a pen friend, and the like.

English language teachers should take the time to teach and revise with their candidates, teaching them how to develop points and brainstorm answers for essays before they begin writing. Writing essays that do not answer the questions asked is as bad as not writing the essay at all.

Once again, I’m concerned about the ease and excitement with which some candidates are providing friendly letterheadings or titles. This is again wrong. Teachers should give their candidates a series of questions and ask the students to identify whether the questions are formal letters, informal letters, descriptive, narrative, etc. This can help train candidates to identify the type of essay.

For instance, “Narrate an interesting dream to a friend” is not the same as “Write a letter to a friend narrating an interesting dream.” While the first one is a narrative essay, the second is a letter requiring a candidate to narrate; hence, the features are not the same.

Writing long, winding, endless paragraphs. During our pre-mock intervention, we advised that no paragraph should be more than six lines, but students wrote a whole page without paragraphs.

Summary and English Comprehension Issues Teachers Must Deal With to Avert Any Disaster at the BECE in July.

Candidates have weak comprehension skills; most are unable to answer comprehension questions, while others leave them blank. The question is whether English teachers have helped their learners acquire the skills for dealing with comprehension passages.

One way to deal with this is to teach candidates how to start answers and write them fully.

Candidates lack the comprehension and reading skills necessary to identify answers within paragraphs and interpret them accordingly.

Informal/Formal Letter Essay Questions for WASSCE 2024 (English Language)

Teachers and students should try this approach to answering comprehension and summary questions.

Before reading the passage, read the questions at least twice.
After the previous step, begin reading the passage. During the first reading, mark or underline every sentence or paragraph that sounds like a potential answer to the questions read earlier.
After the first read, check through to see if you identified the answers to the respective questions, and number the underlined sentences accordingly.
Now, try to respond to the questions by rephrasing your answers to align with the specific requirements of the questions.

Poor summary skills are a major concern for most students, and teachers need to intervene quickly to improve these skills.

How to write formal letters and articles to editors: 2024 BECE and 2024 WASSCE

Poor reading habits led to a weak vocabulary bank, which prevented candidates from providing easy-to-find synonyms for words or phrases in the comprehension passage.

Providing more than one answer in instances where just one word or a phrase is required for an underlined word in the passage has become the practice, and once one of the answers provided is wrong, the candidate loses the full marks allocated to the correct answer.

READ: WAEC Releases English Language Sample Questions For 2024 BECE

Candidates must also fit or fix their one word or phrase into the original comprehension passage and read for understanding. If the word or phrase fits in and makes the meaning of the sentences accurate, then go ahead and provide it as your answer. This is important because most of the candidates’ words do not answer the questions, and they end up losing all of the marks allocated.

READ: 16 BECE Essay Questions to Watch in 2024, Attempt the LAST 5 First

If the above issues are not addressed, most 2024 BECE candidates will fail the English Language exam. A word to a wise…

Source: Wisdom Hammond | Education-News Consult Lead.