Effects Of Artificial Intelligence On Senior Secondary School 2 Students' Achievement In Composition Writing In Pankshin Local Government Area Of Plateau State
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Abstract
Composition writing remains a critical means of communication and a key determinant of students' academic success, yet secondary school students in Nigeria continue to record high failure rates in both internal and external examinations, particularly the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Persistent weaknesses in idea generation, organisation, sentence construction and paragraph development have been linked, among other factors, to the continued dominance of the traditional product-oriented, teacher-centred method of teaching writing. This study therefore investigated the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on Senior Secondary School 2 students' (SSS 2) achievement in composition writing skills in Pankshin Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria. A quasi-experimental design using intact classes was adopted. The population comprised 474 SS2 students, from which a sample of 80 was drawn, 38 in the experimental group and 42 in the control group. A pre-test was administered to establish the competence of the students in composition writing, after which the experimental group was exposed to AI-assisted instruction while the control group received traditional teaching. A post-test was conducted at the end of the intervention. Data were analysed using mean, standard deviation and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation, while the hypotheses were tested using ANCOVA at 0.05 level of significance. Findings indicated that students taught with AI tools achieved substantially higher mean gains in idea generation, organisation and sentence construction than their counterparts in the control group. The study concludes that AI-assisted instruction is effective in improving students' composition writing skills and recommends its integration into secondary school English language classrooms.
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