EFFECT OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING APPROACH ON SENIOR SECONDARY II STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN NARRATIVE COMPOSITION WRITING IN LAFIA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, NASARAWA STATE

Abstract

This study examined the effect of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach on Senior Secondary II students’ achievement in narrative composition writing in Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, Nigeria. The study was motivated by persistent weaknesses in students’ narrative writing, especially in idea development, organization, coherence, and effective paragraph construction. A quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test non-equivalent control group design was adopted. The sample comprised 80 Senior Secondary II students drawn from two intact classes in two public secondary schools. Forty students constituted the experimental group and were taught narrative composition writing using the CLT approach, while another forty students formed the control group and were taught using the conventional method. Data were collected using the Narrative Composition Writing Achievement Test (NCWAT), which assessed students’ performance in overall narrative composition writing, brainstorming, idea generation, and outlining. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that students taught with the CLT approach achieved significantly higher scores in narrative composition writing than those taught with the conventional method. The CLT approach also significantly improved students’ brainstorming, idea generation, and outlining skills. The study concludes that CLT is an effective learner-centred instructional strategy for improving students’ narrative writing achievement. It recommends that English language teachers should integrate communicative, interactive, and process-based writing strategies into composition lessons.