Abstract:
Kiswahili is one of the languages used for communication by a population of over 150 million people all over the world. It is the Lingua Franca for Eastern Africa, the national and one of the official languages of Kenya. Additionally, it is among the compulsory subjects examined at public primary and secondary schools. Despite the importance of Kiswahili, its achievement has been low. It has been suggested that poor performance may be associated with many factors, among them the use of inappropriate teaching strategies. The use of animations in teaching is reported to improve students’ achievement and motivation to learn various other subjects. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of animation in teaching on students’ achievement and motivation to learn Kiswahili reading comprehension in public secondary schools in Njoro sub-county, Kenya. Solomon Four Non-Equivalent Control group design was used. Target Population comprised all 14,292 students in the public co-educational secondary schools in Njoro Sub County. The accessible population included the 4,745 Form Two students from public co-educational secondary schools in the Sub-county. A purposive sampling technique was used to select one Form Two class from each of the four co-educational secondary schools which provided the sample size of 188 students for the study. The four schools were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The instruments used in the study were Kiswahili Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (KRCAT) and the Students’ Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ). The validity of the instruments was checked by supervisors and experts from the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Management of Egerton University. The reliability of the instruments was determined using Kuder -Richardson (K-R) 20 for the KRCAT and the Cronbach alpha for SMQ. A reliability coefficient of 0.76 and 0.73 was obtained respectively hence suitable for the study since they were above 0.7. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Hypotheses were tested using t-test, ANOVA and ANCOVA at α 0.05 significance level. The findings indicated that students taught through animations achieved statistically significantly higher scores than those taught through conventional teaching methods. Their level of motivation was also statistically significantly higher compared to those taught through conventional teaching methods. However, there was no significant gender difference in motivation and achievement when boys and girls were taught through animations. This implies that the use of animations is suitable for teaching both male and female students.
