Influence of Language On Students' Participation in Science Lessons in Ekiti State Secondary Schools

The study investigated the influence of Language on students’ participation in Science Lessons in Ekiti State Secondary Schools. The study adopted descriptive research design of Survey type. The population of the study consisted of senior secondary three (SS3) science students in Secondary Schools in Ekiti State. The sample of the study comprised of senior secondary three (SS3) science students in the selected secondary schools in Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State. Random sampling was used to select four mixed Secondary Schools in Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State. The students were selected using stratified random sampling. Self-Structured questionnaire was used to collect relevant data for the study. The questionnaire was constructed by the researcher and was given to experts in the field of Science Education to ensure the face and content validity. In order to determine the validity and reliability, the data collected on the two separate occasions were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation using split half method. The result obtained on the two occasions showed a correlation coefficient of 75.0 and 78.0 respectively. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency count; percentage and standard deviation were used to answer the general questions raised. It was concluded that the language used by the teacher will have negative influence on the students if the teacher uses difficult languages fail to simplify scientific terminologies and uses very poor method of teaching. It was recommended among others that science teachers must be encouraged to use language that will make the learners understand what the teachers are saying while the weak students must be assisted by teachers by speaking simple sentences. Keywords: Language, Student’s Participation, Science Lessons, Gender, Mother Tongue, Biology,