The reasons why students fail Literature tests include failure to read the prescribed texts, low self-confidence or overconfidence, waste of time during the exam, over-reliance on films, poor expression and organization of the Literature essay, improper introduction and presenting irrelevant material such as a narration of the entire story for every question.
This article will give you the pitfalls you must avoid in order not to fail the Literature exam.
Please note that personally, I dislike being negative. I believe that using words like ‘fail’ or ‘failure’ can cause irreparable damage to one’s confidence level. But we still need to face reality. We must do what needs to be done here so as to achieve our purpose for being here.
I firmly believe that if we all know the causes of poor performance in Literature, we can then avoid going along those paths. Doing the opposite of the reasons why students fail Literature in the WAEC/WASSCE exam can only bring a smile to everybody’s face when the results are released.
I, therefore, urge you to come along with me as I show you what you must avoid doing in order not to invite failure for yourself.
Two Main Types of Reasons
I will divide the reasons why students fail in Literature into two parts. The first part will identify the pre-exam factors that are responsible for the high rate of failure among senior high school Literature students. These are reasons that have to do with students’ attitude and their level of seriousness long before the exam day.
In the second part, we shall look at what takes place right inside the exam hall. A lot of these reasons why students fail Literature in the WAEC/WASSCE and similar high school exams relate to the student’s behaviour inside the exam room. Others are about the actual writing of the answers to the various WAEC Literature questions.
Are you ready to find out why some SHS students and Nov/Dec WASSCE private candidates fail the Literature paper? Then let’s get going.
1. Not Preparing At All
The last time I checked, miracles had stopped happening in WAEC exam halls. This is why students who fail to take their Literature studies seriously hoping for a miracle to save them tend to fail the Literature-in-English test.
2. Refusal to Study Past Questions
When you have no idea about the type of questions you will be asked in the exam, it is never going to be easy answering the questions when the time finally comes. The reluctance to look for and use Literature past questions as part of exam prep activities is one major reason why students fail the Literature test.
3. Avoiding Sections of the Syllabus
You will agree with me that most high school Literature students have a mortal fear of poetry. They think poetry is too difficult to understand and appreciate.
Honestly, I do not think this is true. You can actually understand and enjoy poetry analysis and appreciation with the right guidance. Your attitude to the learning of poetry also counts a lot.
So what happens is that a lot of students avoid studying the prescribed poems. Still, they hope to pass the test. The painful truth is it doesn’t work that way.
Many students avoid studying other areas of the WAEC Literature syllabus they consider to be ‘unimportant’. They hardly take seriously the entire objective test section.
Any attempt to look at Unseen Prose and Unseen Poetry only comes as an afterthought.
As for the Shakespeare drama text, some students do not even know the title of the play that WAEC has prescribed for the period in question.
Now the thing is this. There is no way one can throw away about a third of one’s Literature test score and still expect to pass well.
4. Hasty, Last Minute Preparation
Among the reasons why students fail in Literature is cramming. This refers to the common habit of hurried last-minute study for an examination.
Generally, students who wait for too long to start studying for the Literature test end up performing poorly. These are students who rely on the unfortunate practice of committing to memory some random Literature essays. They then reproduce them verbatim as an answer to any question at all. It is called deviation.
And the worst thing you can do to yourself in a Literature exam is to make your answer deviate from what the questions actually asks you to write about.
How to Avoid Deviation in Essay Writing
5. Failure to Read the Prescribed Literature Texts
I know this from my personal experience dealing with Literature-in-English Students. Quite a good number of Literature students don’t care about reading the novels, plays and poems whose questions they must answer in the test.
Frankly, I think this is one of the reasons students fail the WAEC Literature test. Let’s be blunt here. You have no business going to write a Literature test when you have no interest in reading novels or plays.
The reason I personally spend so much time and energy on studying the prescribed texts is to assist the thousands of WAEC/SHS Literature students out there who are obviously never going to read them.
The summaries and other analyses of themes, characters and literary devices at Cegast Academy are my way of helping you make up for the gaps in your knowledge of the contents of these texts.
It is my hope that, somehow, these summaries and analyses of WAEC Literature books will make your life easier.
But let’s not deceive ourselves. It is still better if each student personally reads thoroughly the prescribed Literature books as part of their studies.
When you add that knowledge to whatever points you are able to obtain from the online Literature study guides, you will definitely do much better in the exam.
6. Low Self-Confidence (or too much of it)
You see, the unavoidable effect of all the above is that the student cannot trust in his own abilities. This is the kind of student who develops goose pimples at a time they should be beaming with self-confidence.
And as Marcus Garvey puts it, if you haven’t confidence in self, you’re twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.
If you haven’t confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.
Marcus Garvey
7. Over-Reliance on Videos
It is also a common belief among students that it is enough to watch the performance of a novel or play in a film. The truth is watching the movie version of a story is not a substitute for reading it. There is so much to miss by watching the film only.
At the very best, such a video should only supplement the actual reading of the story or play. For example, it is not possible to quote properly from a motion picture. Also, many details of the original story of a Literature text are not featured in this movie version. Yet, a large number of students focus on watching the movies instead of reading the texts.
Sad to say, this false assumption contributes to the high rate of student failure in the Literature-in-English paper.
Keep reading to find out what happens in the exam itself and how it may account for the failure of any student in the Literature test.
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WAEC Sample Comprehension Questions and Answers
8. Arriving Late for the Literature Exam
A candidate who arrives late for any school test will have started on the wrong footing. First, such a student feels so tense and nervous that gathering his thoughts in order to write well-organized answers to the Literature questions becomes a problem.
Secondly, arriving ten minutes to an hour late means that it is almost impossible to answer the required number of questions.
9. Waste of Time
Among the reasons why students fail in Literature is that they engage in activities that waste precious time.
Many WAEC/WASSCE candidates prefer to converse with their friends while the exam is ongoing. Others take a look at the questions, decide they are too difficult and quickly go to sleep. The promptings of a kind invigilator may not move them to sit up and do anything. So at the end of it all, they return their answer booklets with almost nothing written in them.
Some candidates indulge in exam malpractices such as copying a fellow candidate’s work. They are the students who often realize too late that they had wasted their time copying worthless answers.
10. Narrating the Whole Story
For every good Literature essay, there is a specific strategy. Sometimes, students fail in Literature because they answer every question by simply producing a summary of the novel or play.
How to Answer Literature Questions Correctly
Take this from me. Unless you’ve been asked to summarize the text (which is highly unlikely), forget about the entire story and focus on the demands of the question only.
11. Improper Introduction
One of the reasons why students fail Literature tests in the WAEC/WASSCE and similar examinations is that they do not begin with the right introductory paragraph. It is not a good practice, for example, to begin every Literature essay with the biography of the author.
Then also, starting your essay with a point that has nothing to do with the question can give the wrong impression about you to the examiner. It could mean you’re neither prepared nor focused.
12. Poor Expression and Limited Clarity
As a Literature student, you cannot afford to construct clumsy sentences with lots of faulty grammar. Unfortunately, students fail the Literature test due to poor expression.
When you make it difficult for the examiner to understand your point, expect to get a very low mark.
13. No Quotations in the Essay
Quotations, to every Literature essay, are like butter to bread. We use quotations to explain and illustrate the assertions we make about a character or theme. They provide evidence that goes to support the points being made.
No one is saying you should populate your high school Literature essay with multitudes of quotations. No. But when none of your essays contains enough quotes that provide proof of your arguments, you cannot hope to get a very high mark.
14. Failure to Cite Literary Devices and Figures of Speech
Poets, in particular, rely heavily on literary devices or figures of speech such as euphemism, symbolism, contrast, repetition and alliteration. They are tools that make their works meaningful and effective.
Thus, WAEC examiners would expect the candidate to mention at least a couple of poetic devices and explain how they help to develop a theme or a character.
Again, a lot of students fail the Literature paper mainly because they only mention these literary techniques. Beyond that, their essays hardly touch on the effective use or otherwise of literary devices.
15. Scant Knowledge of Relevant Incidents
When you read this post, you will understand the huge importance of incidents in the study of prose or drama.
Some high school and university students are unable to do well in the Literature test due to the simple reason that they have no idea about the relevant episodes in the text.
The problem is this. Much of the Literature essay is about pointing to incidents to illustrate your points. So you can imagine the kind of Literature essay one can write without adequate knowledge of a few incidents.
16. Lack of Focus in the Essay
Did you know that it really doesn’t take much to come up with a great Literature essay? Yes! Every high school Literature essay question asks for an answer based on just a tiny fraction of all that you’ve been studying.
For that matter, you may be courting failure when you try to cover more than necessary. Jumping from one idea to another instead of keeping a sharp focus on just what the question is asking is not the best.
17. Inability to Understand the Questions
Finally, most of the students who fail Literature examinations are unable to grasp exactly what each question demands from them.
For example, Describe the roles of Sidi and Lakunle in The Lion and the Jewel and Compare and Compare the Characters of Sidi and Lakunle are not asking for the same answer. Students who fail to make this distinction often produce the wrong answers.
Conclusion
The reasons why students fail the high school Literature paper in examinations such as WASSCE and NECO are not far fetched. The good news is that there is hope for every Literature student to perform creditably in their final school test. All it takes are the following. A strong desire to commit oneself to a serious study of each prescribed text and the preparedness to work hard to avoid the causes of failure in WAEC or high school Literature-in-English.
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