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INTRODUCTION

What is a Composition?
A composition is a combination of thoughts and ideas put down in a logical manner.
A composition can either be fictitious or factual depending on the title given
(rubric).
Types of Compositions.
The main ones include;-

(i) Narratives
(ii) Stories
(iii) Letters- friendly and official
(iv) Recipes.
(v) Reports
(vi) Minutes
(vii) Dialogues
(viii) Filling forms.

NB:- In all the themes covered in the English d e s i g n , the last exercises
introduces a learner into articulating what he or she has learnt orally into
continuous writing.
This dictates the need for proper teaching and design coverage to enhance the
acquisition of language and writing skills.

When does a child begin writing a composition?

Composition writing begins as soon as child begins to think critically and recall
what he or she sees, learns, hears and feels.
A child begins ‘writing’ composition even before joining a formal system of
education.
In formal education, a pupil is introduced to letters then to words and subsequently
sentences.
It is the combination of sentences that bring about a paragraph and many paragraphs
bring out a story.
Of course the paragraphs should be centered on a given goal lesson or subject.
They should also make sense to both the writer and the reader otherwise the whole
process could be futile.
The writer’s thoughts should come out strongly, in fact show me a piece of good
writing and I shall tell you the mind of the writer.

Writing a Composition.
It depends on factors some of which are answers to the following questions:
1. Is it a guided composition?
2. Is it a topical composition?
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 This type of composition is some what restrictive in that the pupil is expected to develop
the story from a certain angle or point of view.
 Much is expected since the facts are known.
Examples of topical compositions
 The August Holiday.
 A wedding Ceremony.
 A tree plating day.
 Soil Erosion.

NB:-
In most of the national assessment composition tasks, the topic is often open
ended.
This means that a learner has a wide scope of what to write about.

One major factor in writing a composition is one’s preparedness. Think critically on

what you have to write about and list down the main points.
This may sound unusual but unless a person on a journey knows where he is, where
he wants to go and how far it is from his initial position, the journey may not take
place.
The writer can ease the writing of a composition if an attempt is made to answer
questions such as What?, Where?,When? How? and So? as relates to the
composition to be written.
For instance, if one was to write a composition on the topic ‘A Wedding
Ceremony’, the following questions can go a long way in making a pupil focus on
the topic,

1. Who is wedding?
2. Where is the wedding taking place?
3. When is the wedding taking place?
4. How are the preparations before the wedding?
5. What is your take or involvement in the wedding?
6. What were the emerging issues during the wedding?
7. So how did it end and what was the day like?

A good composition should therefore have the following notable characteristics:

(i) An interesting introduction – one that captivates the reader and acts as
a gateway to the writers thoughts. It should be short, clear and interesting.
(ii) A body – that brings together the writers thoughts and ideas logically and
must be explicit/ elaborate.
(iii) A conclusion - This captures the lesson experienced in the whole plot. It
brings out the writers feeling about the whole story or sums up the story. At times it
leaves the reader to guess the outcome of an episode. (Creates suspense)
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(iv)
Basing on the title – A wedding ceremony – the introduction should be such that it
touches on the people wedding, the place or venue and the preparation in place.
The body should concentrate much on the ceremony itself- from the service, the
officiating, and the signing of the certificate, the cutting of the cake, the eating
process and the giving of gifts.
The conclusion should highlight the general feeling of the ceremony and the
departure from the venue. The attitude of the writer is felt here. Where need be, a
proverb is best placed to conclude a story.

SKILLS IN COMPOSITION WRITING.

(i) Legibility
A piece of writing must be appealing to both the writer and the reader. The teacher
for that matter looks at the level of legibility as a merit. An illegible (one that cannot
be read) composition is bound to score less compared to the former. Let your lettering
be correct. Some pupils do not write certain letters correctly which bring about some
confusion. For example a pupil can write letter a look like letter Q, letter r that
looks like v. Let your letters be very clear. The rubbing of any letter or word should be
such that the marks do not overlap causing illegibility of the intended word. Avoid
crossing a word and writing another one above it.

The spacing of words should be uniform and not too close neither too far apart. The
letters if possible should follow a particular pattern preferably erect and should be
large enough.

(ii) Fluency
A script should be such that ideas tend to flow in a logical manner. Do not mix up ideas. For
example, what should have been the introduction comes last and what should have been the
conclusion comes first. In the case of events, we would expect a certain sequence of
proceedings that do not seem to overlap. Fluency is also affected by ideas that do not seem to
fully develop or come in quick successions. Such a composition is termed as being “jerky”.
For example, in reference to a composition on A wedding ceremony, it is not in order
to have the arrival of bridal team coming first, then followed by writing about the venue
and then jumping onto the party and then the signing of the certificate. In such a case
the flow is hampered. Another element that hampers flow in composition writing is
the mixing of tenses and wrong structures that tend to confuse the reader. Punctuation is
yet another area that affects the fluency of a composition as we shall see later under
challenges in composition writing.

(iii) Accuracy
This includes all the other elements of language in terms of word agreement, correct
use of words, phrases, proverbs, paragraphing, and punctuation and so on. What
hinder accuracy are the numerous errors displayed in the scripts. These will be
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highlighted later.

(iv) Creativity
This is a skill that has to be developed through interest and being dynamics while
interacting with the course content as well as the immediate environment. It
involves coming up with a unique composition that use correct but unfamiliar
words, expressions and creates suspense - You keep yearning for more when the
story ends. Involvement of all the senses in a composition makes it interesting,
varied and the reader relates well with it. Creating scenes within a scene but still
keeping the flow can be one way of expressing creativity.- for example on a
composition on sports, a writer could create a scene within the main scene about
sports where perhaps a player is about to score but a mad man dashes into the field
as if from hell and picks the ball after which he runs with it into the maize
plantation, or The guest of honour in a harambee meeting thanks the audience and
volunteers to pray for the hefty collection only to find the money gone after.

(v) Originality
Our learning environment has become affected by an attitude of laxity. Most
learners have a tendency of copying work or cramming or memorizing passages,
stories or paragraphs from the many sample composition in textbooks in order to
impress the teachers. This hinders originality of a composition.
This is a practice that should be avoided at all cost. Candidates should realize that
those who mark KCPE composition are teachers who have come across all those
compositions in revision books. They can therefore tell when one writes such a
composition that has been crammed from books.

COMMON CHALLENGES IN COMPOSITION WRITING.

(a) Mother tongue influence

A learner first interacts with his or her language before getting introduced to
English. This has an effect on the writing of the child unless thorough work is done
to alleviate this. A good example is:- ‘today is today’ from the Kiswahili saying
Leo ni leo msema kesho ni mwongo. It may sound proper English but that is far
from the truth. Other examples of instance where mother tongue interference occur
are;

- My brother removes job in Nairobi, instead of, My brother works in

Nairobi
- The tisha told us to go out, Instead of The teacher told us to go out
- We ate lice rast night, Instead of, We ate rice last night
- Where is my pook? Instead of Where is my book?

(b) Spelling errors:

This is a very common problem with most pupils. Some words such as tomorrow,
surprised, beautiful, received, until, writing among other are often not spelled
correctly. Teachers can give dictation to pupils as a remedy to this problem. Pupils on
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the other hand are advised to read widely. Looking up new words in a dictionary is
another sure way to arrest the problem.

(b) Mixing of speech

For example, When the teacher came in he asked us are you going to the show?
We said Yes and we boarded the bus. The underlined words were to be punctuated.
The correct way of writing it would be- When the teacher came in, he asked us “
Are you going to the show?” We said “Yes” and we boarded the bus.
Alternatively, it can be written as a reported speech to read- When the teacher came,
he asked us whether we were to go to the show. We told him that we were interested
and we boarded the bus.

Pupils should learn how to write in the correct speech. This is only possible if they
practice writing compositions which should be marked and errors noted by the
teacher corrected.

(c) Use of short form

This is another area that challenges a number of pupils. KCPE candidates are
advised to be careful when writing short forms of the following words among
others.

Word Short form

Cannot can’t
Shall not shan’t
Is not isn’t
Will not won’t
Could not couldn’t
They are they’re
Would not wouldn’t
Here is an example of a sentence with short form of some words. We couldn’t go
home so the teacher asked us to remain in class. He wouldn’t let us play. Unless in
direct speech, contracted form of verbs should be avoided.

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(d) Wrong use of vocabulary, expression, phrase

I will use the example below to illustrate wrong use of vocabulary, expression and
phrase.
I occasionally without wasting time left the hall and went straight to the office.
Within a snitch of time, I was holding a convocation with the principal.
In the above example, the word occasionally refers to frequency and therefore does
not sound well with the sentence which is on time. In a nick of time, within a stitch of
time or in a fraction of a second would be the right expression to use. The writer must
have held a conversation with the principal or rather a dialogue.

(f) Omission and commission

Some errors are mastered and unless revision is carried out, they will keep recurring
year after year. Such errors are such as return back, enter in, discuss about,
congratulate for reached at among others are common. The additional prepositions are
wrongly placed which distorts the rule of the English language.
Another challenge here is joining words that should not be joined. For example
Iam instead of I am Infact
instead of In fact Infront instead
of In front
Or separating a word that one for example Can not
instead of Cannot
every thing instead of everything.

my self instead of myself

There are also errors of omission such as in the two sentences below

1. My uncle lives in USA.

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2. The monitor put some on the table

The correct way of writing the sentences would be

(i) My uncle lives in the USA.

(ii) The monitor put some books on the table.
The underlined words were omitted

(g) Tenses

This is a major concern in the writing and speaking of English. We more often than not write
what we speak and with a lot of broken English carrying the day, remedial
measures must be put in place. It is not surprising to find a writer with the kind of
writing shown below :

- My mother take coffee and I took tea.

- We eat ugali and meat and then we go home.
- My uncle said that we can go swimming that afternoon.
- She wake up hurriedly and shout for help
- I likes eating rice and meat
The correct way of writing the above sentences is as shown below. Note the
underlined words which were not correctly used earlier.

- My mother took coffee but I took tea. took but to

- We ate ugali and meat and then we went home.
- My uncle said that we could go swimming that afternoon.
- She woke up hurriedly and shouted for help.
- I like eating rice and meat. I like eating rice and meat.

(h) Poor sentence construction:

A sentence is NOT a sentence unless it fulfills the grammatical rule. It would be ridiculous to
say:
Me I always come to school early, the correct way should be- I always come to school
early.
We are see that is not easy to go back home. The correct way should be- We realize
that it was not easy to go home.

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All visitors they could not believe. The correct way should be- All visitors would
not believe.
That was the episode day to recall until I kick the bucket. The correct way should be-
That was an episode to recall until I kick the bucket or That was an unforgettable
episode
NB: It is wrong to have two pronouns or a noun and a pronoun in a sentence
following each other.

(i) Punctuation errors

Many candidates either do not know the use of punctuation marks in writing or they
simply ignore them. Emphasis need to be put in order to alleviate the vice. Some
common punctuation errors involve wrong punctuation such as

- What a great day it was? Instead of What a great day!

- My brother’s wives are coming today. This might sound ambiguous but
reading through a composition, the writer might be referring to his two or three
brothers’ wives. To correct this, the apostrophes should come after (s) so that the
sentence reads- my brother’s wives are coming today.
Mr. Nguri our teacher of English is absent today. Commas are, missing to separate
the main idea from the additional statement. - This is very common. The correct way
of writing is -Mr. Nguri, our teacher of English, is absent today

(j) Irrelevancy

This comes about when the writer deviates from the subject matter and goes on to
write a story that has no relationship with the topic one supposed to write about. For
example if one was writing on the topic Sports, it would be a grave mistake to go a
head and ignore the subject and instead write about a kidnap ordeal or wedding. This is
usually common among candidates who cram a given sample composition from books
prior to a test.
Once again I would like to discourage this. There are instances where a whole class
crams a given composition which they reproduce during the examination. If this
happen during national examination, chances of all the candidates being penalized is
very high.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I wish to state that for a learner to be able to write an elaborate story, a
lot of preparedness has to be done. The teacher has to inculcate the discipline of
wide reading, research, use of the dictionary and the speaking of English. This
enhances confidence in the learner which in turn creates a sense of determination in
composition writing.

To the teacher,

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The evaluation or making of composition should be objective. A teacher should target

what to look for in a given composition. If for instance your aim is to look for spelling
errors, do so without putting much emphasis on writing or any other aspect of language.
This should be alternated every other time with emphasis on a different area. Since
practice makes perfect, pupils should be made to write as many compositions as is
practical.
As for the candidates, I wish to advise that you desist from lifting passage, stories or
extract from past papers, newsletters, revision composition books or any other source
but rather be creative in your own way. This does not mean that you should not borrow
words, expressions, phrases, but copying a whole story hampers your own intellectual
capability

Read the story below and identify the errors discussed earlier. There are more
than thirty errors!
SAMPLE COMPOSITION(WITH ERRORS).
I wake up very early in the mourning and headed to the bathroom. I took a cold
shawer that left me as fresh as a cucumber. I took a few minutes at the dressing table
before emerging looking elegant.
The table has been set. I sat comfortably and served myself. Their were all
sorts of delicacy ranging from sausages, bacons, egg not to mention tosted bread. In
no time, I had grulped my scrimptions breakfast and washed it down with a glass of
worm water. I was set for the long journey that awaited me- a tour in Tsavo
National park.
The journey was to comment shortly before eight thirty. I walked the short distance
from home to the local market centre where the Moi primary school bus was to pick
up. To my utter amazing, Ochola, the moniter of our class, was already their. I
joined him and congratulated him for his early arrival.
By quarter past eight almost everybody had arrived at the place except Kasuve who,
as long as I could remember has never arrived to school earlier than eight. He was a
reknowed latecomer.
The bus negotiated a corner from the far end of the end of the market and halted at
the bus stop area. we filed in as the classteacher Mr Nguri called the register. It was
not until the driver ignited the engine that Kasuve was seen running towards the bus.
As soon as he entered in the bus it set of.

You may ask questions if you wish, the teacher said as the bus drove on and on.
With it’s windscreen glittering as the sun shore on it was surprising to find that what
seem a days journey took us not more than two hours to be there.

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