The Teaching Strategies of Poetry in Two Selected Secondary Schools in Tarauni and Kumbotso Local Government Areas of Kano City

The fall in standard of education in Nigeria is often evaluated with the performance of students in terminal examinations handled by West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council. In the recent time, there have been reported cases of students' failure in Literature-in English which has three genres (poetry, drama and prose). This paper limits its focus to poetry because it is often taken as the most difficult of all the genres of literature. Two schools were taken from Tarauni and Kumbotso local government areas of Kano. Students were selected with random sampling technique. These students were divided into experimental and control groups after the selection of ballot papers with yes or no written on them. Students in the experimental groups were taught by the researchers while the control groups were taught by their respective teachers. Comparing the pre-test and post-test of the experimental and control groups, it was found out that teaching strategies adopted by teachers have significant impact on the performance of students in Literature-in-English examination. In view of the findings, this paper, therefore, recommends that government should provide instructional materials in schools and teachers should be creative and dynamic in the course of teaching in their respective classrooms.