A Description of Grammatical Competence in the Written English of First Year University Students in Kenya

Abstract

This study delineates grammatical competence in the English of first-year university students in Kenya. This is a descriptive research that involves 405 students who were admitted by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) into 15 private and public universities in Kenya in 2021. The study measures how far the study subjects can communicate clear meaning, choose vocabulary correctly, use correct sentence structures, punctuation, tense, aspect, spelling, as well as subject-verb agreement. Measured on a scale of 1 to 5, the level of grammatical competence of first-year university students who comprise the study sample is 3.34 for formal English and 3.28 for informal English. The indicator of grammatical competence with the highest score is the ability to communicate a clear meaning with a score of 3.9. This is followed by choice of vocabulary and use of correct sentence structure, both of which have an average score of 3.3. Punctuation and syntax: tense, aspect, spelling, and subject-verb agreement have the lowest scores of 3.2 and 3.0, respectively. These findings suggest that at the end of the Kenyan secondary school English curriculum, learners have slightly above average competence in grammar: 66.8 percent for formal English and 65.6 percent for informal English. These levels are low for a curriculum that cites communicative competence as the goal of teaching English in secondary schools. The findings also imply that the study subjects are ill-prepared for the language demands of academic writing necessary at the university level.