THE LISTENING ABILITY IN ENGLISH OF THE LEARNERS JOINING SECONDARY SCHOOL IN KENYA: A CASE STUDY OF THE MUTONGUNI SECONDARY SCHOOL IN KITUI COUNTY.

The Kenyan government through various polices has emphasised the teaching of English in all primary schools in Kenya. It is thus expected that when learners are exiting primary schools and entering secondary schools, they have acquired the Desired Competence Levels in listening in English. The present study was conducted with the aim of establishing the levels of competence in listening in English of the learners joining secondary schools in Kenya. Gender is a significant factor in the education system given the social and cultural role that education plays in the society. The study investigated the influence of gender on these competence levels. Purposive sampling was used to select a sample of 20 girls and 20 boys from the Mutonguni Secondary School in Kitui County. A test comprising dictation, cloze test and listening comprehension components was administered to the respondents. ANOVA was conducted to establish whether the different performances in the different listening tasks between the genders were statistically significant or not. The findings were that gender as a social variable only influenced performance in the listening comprehension but not performance in the cloze test and dictation. Pearson correlation test was used to correlate the different performances in the different listening tasks. Performance in the listening comprehension correlated with performance in dictation while performance in the cloze test did not correlate with performance in any other listening task.