EFFECTS OF THINK-PAIR-SHARE STRATEGY ON NIGERIAN CERTIFICATE IN EDUCATION STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN EXPOSITORY COMPOSITION WRITING IN FEDERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION PANKSHIN, PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of the Think-Pair-Share (TPS) cooperative learning strategy on Nigerian Certificate in Education II (NCE II) students' achievement in expository composition writing at Federal College of Education (FCE) Pankshin, Plateau State, Nigeria. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent pre-test post-test control group design was adopted. Simple random sampling was used to select 143 NCE II students from schools within the Pankshin Local Government Area; 85 were assigned to the experimental group (TPS instruction) and 58 to the control group (lecture method). The Composition Writing Achievement Test (CWAT) was used for data collection; content validity was established by experts from the English Education and Research, Measurement and Evaluation units of the University of Jos, and reliability was determined via the test re-test method (r = 0.86). The study explored student performance in five sub-domains: idea generation, organisation, paragraphing, punctuation, and editing. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) addressed the research questions; Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) tested the hypotheses at α = 0.05. Findings showed that TPS-taught students achieved significantly higher post-test scores (̅x = 68.93) than control-group peers (̅x = 52.47), F(1, 140) = 45.52, p < 0.05. No significant gender differential was found among TPS students (p > 0.05). Based on these findings, it is recommended that community-based literacy programmes be compared with TPS and other cooperative interventions, and that TPS be adopted in NCE English Language Education programmes.