The impact of interactive teaching methods on the development of composition writing skills among O'Level secondary school learners in Ibanda Municipality

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of interactive methods of teaching English, as a subject in the development of composition writing skills among O'level secondary school learners in Ibanda municipality. This research was guided by Vygosky's theory of social constructivism which holds the premise that students learn primarily through interactions with their peers and teachers, whereas teachers stimulate and facilitate conversation through harnessing the natural flow of conversation in the classroom. A mixed research approach was used. Purposive sampling was used to select the population of the study of which there were 250 students, 9 administrators and 6 teachers from three government aided schools in Kagongo division, Ibanda Municipality in Ibanda district. The total sample size of the study was 161 participants. Questionnaires and an interview guide were used to collect data. Qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis while quantitative data was analyzed at univariate and bivariate levels. At univariate level, data analysis involved calculation of descriptive statistics namely, frequencies, percentages and means. At bivariate level, analysis was carried out to establish significance or relationship between the dependent and independent variables using a Chi-square test. The significance was established at the P-Square value of ≤ 0.05. The researcher also used the structured observation method on experimental groups that were selected using simple random sampling. They were taught using the different interactive teaching methods and later subjected to composition writing tests, and the results obtained were used in the pre- and post- test comparison. The results indicated that the learners in the group taught using inquiry-based learning wrote the most meaningful compositions compared to those in the other groups. The Chi-square tests revealed that inquiry-based learning was significantly impactful in the development of learners‟ English writing skills compared to modelled writing and collaborative learning. Basing on the study findings, Inquiry-based learning was found to enable learners to become better critical and creative writers as it provided a platform for continuous research and discovery about different aspects of writing such as punctuation, diction, sentence structure, and coherence among others. The study therefore recommends that more inquiry-based learning strategies should be used in an English language classroom in order to realize an improvement in learners‟ composition writing skills.