Proficiency of Grade Nine Students in English Word Derivation

Abstract

This research entitled "Proficiency of Grade Nine Students in English Word Derivation" is an attempt to find out the proficiency of the students of grade nine in English word derivation by using the class changing derivational suffixes and compare their proficiency in terms of schools, government-aided vs. private schools, gender and four major word classes : noun, verb, adjective and adverb. It was also carried out to determine the proficiency level of those students and suggest some pedagogical implications. The sample population consisted of 120 students studying in grade nine in six government-aided and private schools of Kavre district. Three government-aided and three private boarding schools were selected through purposive random sampling procedure and twenty students (10 boys and 10 girls) from each of the selected schools were chosen by using stratified random sampling procedure for the sake of data collection. The tool for the data collection consisted of test items. The proficiency in derivation of English words was analysed and interpreted by using tables and statistical tools: percentage and average. The total proficiency of the students (91.34% of the full mark) was found very good. The students of Saraswoti Kunj Boarding School performed the best with 98.21% and the students of Shikshya Sadan Higher Secondary School performed the lowest with 76.5%. The proficiency of private school students was better than that of government-aided school students by 11.16% and the girls were 1.16% more proficient than the boys. The students were found the best in adverb and lowest in adjective derivation. The thesis comprises four chapters. Chapter one basically introduces the research work with general background of the English language focusing on the research topic itself, review of the related literature, objectives and significance of the study and definitions of the specific terms. Chapter two introduces the methodology adopted for the study. This chapter deals with sources of data (primary and secondary), population of the study, sampling procedure, tools, process of data collection and limitations of the study. Chapter three presents the analysis and interpretation of the data under different headings using the statistical tools : tables, average and percentage. Chapter four presents findings of the study and recommendations from the perspective of pedagogical implications as well as further research.