INVESTIGATING PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE OF NOUNS

Abstract

Experience and research demonstrate that teacher quality is vital in ensuring successful learning outcomes. This is crucial, not only because primary school education is the foundation for the secondary and university levels of education but because the English language itself continues to occupy a central place on the global stage.  One way teachers teach English is to talk about the language using word classes. Word classes belong to metalanguage, the language we use to talk about language. One major word class is nouns. The aim of this study was to find out whether chosen primary school teachers in Igbo Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State could correctly identify nouns in sentences. The result indicated that only 16.2 % of the teachers scored 50% and above in the test. The implications of this result in the teaching of English in our primary schools were discussed and some suggestions for the way forward made.