A Comparative Study of Students’ Academic Performance in Language and Literature Courses: English and French Languages in Focus

This study assesses and compares the performance of students studying French and English languages in language and literature courses in their various Departments at Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo in Oyo State. This study also focuses attention on possible ways of improving the performance of the students in the afore-mentioned courses. It also suggests ways by which their performance in the said courses could be improved. The study considered some students’ results in the said courses over a period of three years (between 2010 and 2013). The collection of data was by the use of students’ results and questionnaire that were administered randomly to a selected sample population of some students. For this study, sixty students were randomly selected in English Department while fifteen students were purposely selected in French Department. Interviews were conducted by the lecturers in charge of those courses with above seven years of experience in teaching these courses and some observations were also employed as secondary instruments. The data collected were analyzed using simple percentages. The findings show that students performed better in language courses than in literature courses.