Learning the English Passive Voice: Difficulties, learning strategies of Igbo ESL learners and pedagogical implications

From the author’s teaching experience, a greater number of Nigerian university students either stick monotonously to the active English sentences or use the expletive “It” structure. This paper investigated the difficulties Igbo bilinguals encounter when learning the English passive and the grammar learning strategies they adopt to overcome the difficulties. For the study, 30 Igbo speaking 100 level students of the Department of English and Communication Arts, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE) Port Harcourt were selected. At the end of teaching the English passive voice, two written achievement tests were given to the class from which the scripts of the sampled students were selected. Data from three academic sessions were used for the purpose of ensuring correctness and objectivity of results. For data elicitation on the difficulties encountered and learning strategies used, the students were asked to write diaries of their problems and how they coped with them. In –class observation and think aloud protocols were also used. The findings revealed that the most difficult aspect was the tense-aspect changes of the verb phrase and the most used strategy was affective strategy. Based on the findings, this paper discussed some pedagogical implications.   Key words: English passive voice, difficulties, learning strategies, Igbo learners, pedagogical implications.