Abstract:
This 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.
