Performance differences and gender in Kiswahili creative writing: a case study of selected secondary schools in Nyamira County, Kenya

Abstract

This study investigated comparative differences in performance among boys and girls in Kiswahili creative writing in selected secondary schools in Kenya. The study was carried out in Nyamira County in Kenya located at a GPS of 0.5210° S, 34.9140° E. Simple random sampling, cluster and systematic sampling techniques were used to select the students. Ten secondary schools were used in the study and the sample comprised 180 students (on an equal distribution of boys and girls,). The research instrument was a Kiswahili creative writing task. The form 4 students were required to perform a task which involved writing an essay in Kiswahili. To reveal the sex differences in Kiswahili creative writing, the two-tailed t-test was used. The sex differences were considered significant if they were more than the critical value (t-critical: 2.576) at p<.01 based on 178 degrees of freedom. The study revealed that girls outperform boys in overall performance in Kiswahili creative writing, style and spelling conventions whereas the two sexes remained at par in content presentation, vocabulary use and use of grammatical elements in Kiswahili creative writing. In light of the above findings, the researcher generally recommends that students should be provided with remedial teaching to improve their performance in Kiswahili creative writing and a sex unit be established in the department of languages to monitor the progress of boys and girls among other many recommendations.