Browsing by Author "Mwakapina, Job Wilson"
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Item Communication skills course in bridging the gap of weak Students’ communicative competence and accentuating Performance: a case of Sokoine University of Agriculture(SciencePG, 2020-01-06) Mwakapina, Job WilsonThis paper reports the findings on the effectiveness of Communication Skills (CS) course in boosting students’ communication competence at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA). In particular, the study determined whether there is a relationship between the ability in the CS and performance in other courses offered at the university. It also assessed the impact of the course on the students’ performance in other courses of their specialty after the training of the course, and lastly, it gauged the extent of effectiveness of the course. The study involved instructors and students and were obtained through random and purposive sampling procedures. Data for the study were collected using questionnaires, interviews and documentary reviews, and were treated qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings show that the course is not much effective at boosting students’ communication competence. Furthermore, it is revealed that there is no relationship between the CS course and other courses. This is perhaps the least anticipated result of all because one of the key objectives for teaching CS course is for it to help students to perform better in other courses of their specialization. Instead of simply concluding that CS and other courses are not connected or there is no impact of CS on other courses, there is a need of considering exceptional factors which have led to the situation. Of course, improved performance because of CS is expected, but based on these findings, there is no clear effect, partly would be because most of the non-CS instructors are being concerned much with the material content of their courses, rather than the grammatical/CS parts when evaluating students’ works. This makes CS components not reflected in the students’ performance of most of the courses. The study urges the government to improve and expand infrastructures to match with enrollment. Again, it needs to hire more academic staff and retain them through improving their salaries, incentives and payments of their demands to remedy the problem of high teacher-students ratio which is currently alarming.Item Grammar for successful written discourse: are the ESL/EFL students in Tanzania universities truly learning?(2016-03) Mwakapina, Job WilsonGrammar of a language is one of the key factors to successful writing at college or workplace. This study thought to investigate whether English grammar taught to undergraduate students in Tanzania helps them write well. 120 students were drone from one university and subjected to a writing test before and after grammar training. Thereafter, their texts were evaluated using rubrics, and scores analysed using Paired T-Test. The overall analysis reflected that there is a significant difference (t (119) = - 4.398, p<0.05). However, this does not mean each grammatical item is statistically significant. A slight / no difference was realised on some grammatical items. The study recommends instructors to put much effort on all the grammatical components, but with a special focus on sentences construction and punctuation skills, tenses, linking signals and paragraph crafting, since these are the areas which the study showed that students have serious weaknessesItem Grammar for successful written discourse: are the esl/efl students in Tanzania universities truly learning?(2016) Mwakapina, Job WilsonGrammar of a language is one of the key factors to successful writing at college or workplace. This study thought to investigate whether English grammar taught to undergraduate students in Tanzania helps them write well. 120 students were drone from one university and subjected to a writing test before and after grammar training. Thereafter, their texts were evaluated using rubrics, and scores analysed using Paired T-Test. The overall analysis reflected that there is a significant difference (t (119) = - 4.398, p<0.05). However, this does not mean each grammatical item is statistically significant. A slight / no difference was realised on some grammatical items. The study recommends instructors to put much effort on all the grammatical components, but with a special focus on sentences construction and punctuation skills, tenses, linking signals and paragraph crafting, since these are the areas which the study showed that students have serious weaknesses.Item The influence of language of instruction on students’ academic outcomes: the experience of secondary schools in Morogoro, Tanzania(SUA, 2014) Mwakapina, Job Wilson; Mhandeni, Abdulkarim ShabanMany have ascribed the poor performance that secondary school students in Tanzania have suffered in various school subjects in the national examinations to the students’ weakness in English, the Language of Instruction (LoI). This brief paper seeks to determine the influence of LoI on students’ academic success in secondary schools. An English Language Proficiency Test (ELPT) and students’ academic archival reports provided the data and a Statistical Package for Software System (SPSS) facilitated data analysis. Analysis brought to light the finding that proficiency in LoI affects performance only to a slight extent. Non-ELP factors exert a stronger influence on performance in subjects other than English while – not surprisingly – English proficiency does indeed exercise much influence on English achievement. The study concludes that academic performance is a function of several variables and that ELP plays a role in performance but not the major role. The study recommends that the government (1) emphasize the improvement of ELP, since the greater the improvement, the more a positive influence may be anticipated; and (2) consider using ELP as an additional eligibility criterion for admission into higher education.Item Language change in bongo movies in tanzania: a reflection of identity deconstruction and globalization resulting from socio-cultural and economic transformations(Academic Research Publishing Group, 2018) Mwandelile, Edwin Philemon; Mwakapina, Job WilsonAfter the independence of Tanganyika in1961 and its unification with Zanzibar to form Tanzania in 1964, Bongo movie artists in Tanzania have increasingly been using more English in Kiswahili movies than before. This paper sought to describe this new trend. Specifically, it highlights evidence and describes the motivations and impacts of the change. The study was conducted in Dar es Salam city involving movies acted before and after 1961 to 2013. The study involved spectators, actors and actresses, producers, directors and distributors. Data were collected through documentary review and interview methods, and were analysed descriptively and comparatively. Many factors have been realised to contribute to this change. However, they can be mainly categorised into psychological, cultural and economic factors, which all are a result of socio-cultural and economic changes which have been taking place in the country since1980s. Besides, it is revealed that the change has mainly impacted in deconstruction of Tanzanians’ identity and economic gains to key Bongo movie stakeholders. The study has revealed further that the change deconstructs our identity as a nation because the country remains half-caste in film industry, since there is no clear cut between Tanzanian and Nigerian movies. Therefore, the government is urged through the National Films Censorship Board, to maintain nation’s identity by inspecting, monitoring and certifying quality of movies before they are released to the market. All the substandard movies with code mixing, wrong English titles and subtitles should be monitored before they go public