Analysis of the challenges that affect the construction of English Language Sentences among second year ELS students of Makerere University

Abstract

This paper highlights the results of the investigations carried out to analyze the challenges that affect the construction of English language sentences among the second year ELS students of Makerere University. The overall purpose of this research is to investigate the challenges that affect the construction of English sentences. It is also aimed at establishing the linguistic background of the second year ELS students of Makerere University; study the ELS curriculum of Makerere University among other objectives. The topic of study came from the fact that as students of ELS, second year students ought to have at least grasped the basics of the language which include sentence constructions but this was different since most of them reach second year still with prevalent difficulty in constructing sentences unfortunately this may remain the same till they leave campus hence calling for an analysis of these challenges of sentence construction. The basic design of the research is qualitative in nature, where the data collected is reported and explained in detail. It was carried out by use of a physical interviews and virtual questionnaire that respondents filled in online. The research study revealed that the students do have challenges in constructing English language sentences and this is attributed to reasons like the influence of their mother tongue, diverse linguistic backgrounds of the students, and inappropriate modes of content delivery, limited practice time among others. One of the outstanding conclusions the research made was that more emphasis had to be placed on individual practice of sentence constructions and making of the learning time more of practical than theoretical. A copy of the interview guide and questionnaire utilized by the respondents is appended at the end of this dissertation.