Gender- Mix of School and Performance in Written English Language

The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of gender- mix-of-school on the first year degree students’ performance in written English language. The basic design of the study was survey. Two researcher-structure instrument -“Interference Variables Questionnaire (IVQ) and “English Language Performance Test (ELPT) was used for the data collection. The Interference Variables Questionnaire (IVQ) was developed to elicit information on school attended-single sex/co-educational English Language Performance Test (ELPT) was used to elicit data on the aspects of written English where the learners’ errors are developmental and interlingual. These were administered to the 2013/2014 first year degree students Michael Okpara University of Agriculture numbering 600 from 8 colleges of the university. Three research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. Means were used to provide answers to the research questions while t-test analysis was employed to find out if there was any significant difference. The results indicated, among other things, that the English language performance of students who attended co-educational school differs significantly from those who attended single –sex schools. Students who attended co-attended co-educational schools performed better than those who attended single-sex schools.