Causes of Bad Grades in ENG 103

The importance of learning English cannot be overstated. It is the official language of diplomacy. Since it is a global language, most of the advanced books for higher studies are written in English. Students are therefore expected to possess knowledge of the English language in order to continue higher education and to communicate with ease in their personal and professional lives. Thus, the ENG 103 course has been made compulsory in the teaching curriculum to improve the basics of English. Unfortunately, many students end up getting a bad grade in this course due to poor background knowledge, lack of learning motivation and insincerity. Firstly, students end up getting a bad grade due to poor background knowledge in English. Many students come from Bengali medium who naturally tend to fear English due their lack of exposure to the language. They fail to provide the required standard of English writing as expected by the teachers. Most of them fail to grasp the basic concepts due to their inability to understand the class lectures which are conducted in English. Moreover, numerous grammatical errors and weak vocabulary base contribute towards the poor performance in ENG 103 course. Besides poor background knowledge, many students perform badly in ENG 103 due to lack of learning motivation. Mastering a foreign language is not an easy task. It requires regular and painstaking effort along with the enthusiasm. Thus, the weak students with poor learning strategies give up easily when they face such struggle. Moreover, many fail to understand the immediate need to use this language and ultimately end up with a poor grade. Lastly, some students get a bad grade merely due to their insincerity. In addition to being weak in English; they remain inattentive during classes and even miss lectures entirely and thus lag behind in class participation. Many students dont submit their assignments on time even though the assignments carry a significant weight of the total mark. This eventually results in poor performance.

Thus, weak background knowledge, lack of motivation and enthusiasm & insincerity towards learning are the major causes of poor performance in English. In such a case, formulating and adapting learning strategies to complement students English language level and then encourage successful participation can be an effective remedy.