English language is one of the most important subjects every student must pass in any type of examination. In Nigeria, WAEC and NECO are two leading examination bodies that conduct senior school certificate examinations.
WAEC stands for West Africa Examination Council, the examination body is responsible for conducting exams in west Africa. while NECO National Examination Council is responsible for conducting exams in Nigeria.
These examination bodies conduct English Language exams that aim at testing the ability of candidates to use the appropriate form of English for different purposes, organize ideas logically and coherently in writing, interpret information from various sources, such as graphs, diagrams, tables and maps.
It also tests their ability to write reports and essays on everyday topics while demonstrating their capacity to express themselves clearly both orally and in writing.
So what are the main areas of concentration students should expect? This article provides you with 10 Areas Of Concentration For English Language Exam In WAEC and NECO.
1 Comprehension Passages
Students are required to read a passage and answer questions that follow.
2. Summary Writing
Students will be given a passage in which they are expected to highlight the main points and summarize them into one paragraph of not more than 60 words.
3. Essay Writing
This involves writing on any one of the topics given by the examiners. The topics can either be current affairs or hypothetical situations, which students have to write on in essay form.
4. Letter Writing
-Candidates will be given two questions, out of which they are expected to choose one and write a letter based on it.
Some letter formats include formal and informal letters, So students must be prepared to write a letter.
5. Lexis and Structure
Students are frequently assessed on their understanding of the meaning of English terms in examination situations.
The test may come in the form of synonyms or antonyms, contextual meaning etc.
Under Lexis and structure, students should take note of the following:
-Synonyms
-Antonyms
-Homonyms
-Clauses and sentence patterns
-Collocation
-Punctuation and spelling
And many more
6. Tense
You can not escape this topic in any English language, the best way to ace the questions examiners will set in this area is to understand the types of tenses in the English language with examples.
7. Word stress
Word stress involves the emphasis we place on a specific syllable of a word when pronouncing it.
In English words that have more than one syllable, we usually don’t pronounce every syllable with the same weight, so each syllable in a word can be stressed or unstressed. WAEC and NECO examiners often set questions on this area in English language.
8. Spellings.
This section contains questions designed to assess students’ ability to spell in the English language.
This is the format of the questions. You will be given four or five possibilities and told to choose the correct spellings; the correct answer is hidden within the options, so you will need to be adept at spelling to figure it out.
9. Questions Tag
In English language questions, a tag is a very short clause after a statement that turns it into a statement into a question. for example, She said, she arrived in Lagos late didn’t she?
10. Oral English
This is a must-know for any English language exam. Oral English is a branch of the English language that assesses a student’s ability to communicate in English. Expect questions like this under spoken English in your English language paper as students preparing for WAEC and NECO.
-Pronunciation
-Stress
-Vowel and consonant sound
-Syllables
-Consonant cluster
-Rhymes
-Intonation
In conclusion, To ace your English language paper you have to take the above topics seriously because they are very important.
Do you need help with the above topics? Visit Passnownow to have access to study materials.
