The West African Senior Secondary Certificate
Examination (WASSCE) Syllabus
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
(For Candidates in The Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia Only)
PREAMBLE
This examination sets out to test the different basic skills of communicating in English using the mediums of speech and writing. The examination will test the receptive and productive abilities of candidates. These abilities will be demonstrated in the following forms:
- Reading Comprehension,
- Summary,
- Vocabulary,
- Lexis and Structure,
- Listening Comprehension and recognition of different aspects of spoken English. (For Oral English only. Liberian Candidates will take Test of Orals.)
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The objective of the syllabus is to measure the extent to which the aims of the teaching syllabuses have been realized in candidates’ secondary school career. The examination sets out to examine candidates’ ability to
- use correct English;
- write about incidents in English that are appropriate to specified audiences and situations;
- organize material in paragraphs that are chronologically, spatially and logically coherent;
- control sentence structures accurately;
- exhibit variety in the use of sentence patterns;
- comply with the rules of grammar;
- spell and punctuate correctly;
- comprehend written and spoken English;
- recognize implied meaning, tones and attitudes;
- use an acceptable pronunciation that can be comprehended by others;
- recognize the physical characteristics of English sounds and the letters that represent them.
- pick out and summarize relevant information from set passages.
SCHEME OF EXAMINATION
There will be three papers – Papers 1, 2 and 3, all of which must be taken. Papers 1 and 2 will be combined in a composite paper to be taken at one sitting.
PAPER 1: Will consist of eighty multiple choice questions, all of which should be answered within 1 hour for 40 marks.
PAPER 2: Will consist of five essay topics and a passage each to test candidates’ essay writing, comprehension, and summary skills. Candidates will be expected to write an essay on one of the topics and answer all the questions on Comprehension and Summary passages. The paper will last 2 hours and carry 100 marks.
PAPER 3: Will consist of sixty multiple choice items on Test of Orals for candidates in Nigeria and Liberia, Listening Comprehension test will be administered for candidates in the Gambia and Sierra Leone. All the questions will be answered in 45 minutes for 30 marks.
DETAILED SYLLABUS
PAPER 1: This is an objective/multiple choice paper comprising 80 questions: 40 lexical and 40 structural items. Each question/item will have four options lettered A to D.
A. LEXIS
In addition to items testing knowledge of the vocabulary of everyday usage (i.e. home, social relationships, common core school subjects) questions will be set to test candidates’ ability in the use of the general vocabulary associated with the following fields of human activity:
- Building and building construction;
- Agriculture;
- Fishing;
- Stock exchange;
- Health;
- Environment;
- Culture, Institutions and Ceremonies;
- Law and Order;
- Motor Vehicles and Travelling;
- Government and Administration;
- Sports;
- Religion;
- Science and Technology;
- Animal husbandry;
- Advertising;
- Human Internal Body system and function.
II. Idiomatic expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs, context clues – the total meaning of which cannot be arrived at simply by consideration of the dictionary meanings of the words in the structures in which they appear.
III. Structural elements of English e.g. sequence of tenses, matching of pronouns with their antecedents, matching of verbs and subjects, and correct use of preposition, conjunction, and verbal and verbal phrases.
IV. Figurative Usage
The term ‘general’ vocabulary refers to those words and usage of words normally associated with the fields of human activity in A1 above which are generally known, used and understood by most educated people who, while not engaged in that field of activity may have occasion to read, speak or write about it. Thus, for example, in the vocabulary of transportation by road, one would expect knowledge of terms such as ‘pedestrian’ and ‘traffic’ which most educated people understand, but not ‘berm’ or ‘camber’ which are specialized.
All items will be phrased in such a way as to test the use and understanding of the required lexis, rather than dictionary definitions and explanations. In practice, the test of lexis will be so designed as to explore, not merely the extent of the candidates’ vocabulary but more importantly their ability to respond to sense relations in the use of lexical items e.g. synonyms, antonyms, homonyms.
In the test of figurative language, candidates will be expected to recognize when an expression is used figuratively and not only when it is used literally.
B. STRUCTURE
Structure here includes:
- The patterns of changes in word-forms which indicate number, tense, degree, etc;
- The patterns in which different categories of words regularly combine to form groups and these groups in turn combine to form sentences;
- The use of structural words e.g. conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, etc.
PAPER 2: This paper will be divided into three sections (A, B and C). Candidates will be required to spend 2 hours on this paper.
SECTION A: ESSAY WRITING (50 marks)
Candidates will be required to spend 50 minutes on this section. There will be five questions in all and candidates will be required to answer only one question.
The questions will test candidates’ ability to communicate in writing. The topics will demand the following kinds of writing:
- letter; (ii) speech; (iii) narration; (iv) description; (v) argument/debate; (vi) report; (vii) article; (viii) exposition; (ix) creative writing. Marks will be awarded for:
- Content: relevance of ideas to the topic;
- Organization: formal features (where applicable), good paragraphing, appropriate emphasis and arrangement of ideas;
- Expression: effective control of vocabulary and sentence structure;
- Mechanical Accuracy: correct grammar, punctuation, spelling etc.
The minimum length will be 450 words.
SECTION B: COMPREHENSION (20 marks)
Candidates will be required to spend 30 minutes on this section. The section will consist of one passage of at least three hundred and fifty (350) words. Candidates will be required to answer all the questions on the passage.
The questions will test candidates’ ability to:
- find appropriate equivalents for selected words or phrases;
- understand the factual content;
- make inferences from the content of the passage;
- understand the use of English expressions that reveal/reflect sentiments/emotions/attitudes;
- identify and label basic grammatical structures, words, phrases or clauses and explain their functions as they appear in the context;
- identify and explain basic literary terms and expressions;
- recast phrases or sentences into grammatical alternatives.
The passage will be chosen from a wide variety of sources all of which should be suitable for this level of examination in terms of theme and interest. The passage will be written in modern English that should be within the experience of candidates. The comprehension test will include at least four questions based on (ii) above.
SECTION C: SUMMARY (30 marks)
Candidates will be required to spend 40 minutes on this section. The section will consist of one prose passage of about five hundred (500) words and will test candidates’ ability to:
- extract relevant information;
- summarize the points demanded in clear concise English, avoiding repetition and redundancy; present a summary of specific aspects or portions of the passage. The passage will be selected from a wide variety of suitable sources, including excerpts from narratives, dialogues and expositions of social, cultural, economic and political issues in any part of the world.
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NOTE: This Syllabus is edited
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