Executive SummaryToday's fast-paced world is becoming increasingly characterized by technology driven communication, which has transformed the world into a large global connected community with everincreasing outreach of information and communication technology (ICT). Technology plays an increasingly important role in people's lives, and it is envisaged that technological literacy will soon become a functional requirement for people's work, social, and even personal lives. For both social and economic reasons students will need computer and communication technology skills if they are to live successfully in a knowledge-based society. The purpose of this study is to examine the ICT usage habits and the self-assessed ICT competencies possessed by undergraduate students in teacher preparation programmes in the University of Benin. A second important issue that was addressed was whether there were significant differences in the perceived ICT competency among students according to demographic and study related factors. Thus, the paper's central research objectives are: To examine the ICT usage habits of students in teacher preparation programmes. To examine the self-assessed ICT skills' competencies possessed by students in teacher preparation programmes. To determine whether there were significant differences in perceived ICT competencies among students in teacher preparation programmes according to demographic and study related factors (gender, and type of computer training).A descriptive survey was adopted and the target population was all students in levels 200, 300, and 400 of the faculty of education, University of Benin. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire adapted from Bassey, Akuegwu, Udida, Ntukidem, and Ekabua (2007). The results show that:Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission.Editor: Jane Nash Survey of ICT Competencies Students' ICT usage was low, particularly the use of internet and email. The respondents perceived themselves to be good in word processing and file navigation, moderate in Internet browsing and emailing. Only two percent (2%) of the respondents perceived themselves to be competent in PowerPoint with about seventy percent (70%) having no capability at all. There was no significant difference in the perceived competency among students according to gender and academic year/level. However, there w...

Teaching practice is a very vital component of teacher programme. This study examined student teacher"s perceptions of the source of teaching practice related anxieties. The student teacher"s source of anxieties questionnaire (STSAQ) was used for data collection. Two hundred and seventy-seven undergraduate students of the Faculty of Education in the University of Benin in their penultimate and final years who were on teaching practice in the 2011/2012 session in secondary schools across the country took part in the study. The findings indicated that student teachers did not differ in their perceptions of the sources of teaching practice related anxieties. The results also showed that there were no significant gender, and year in programme (academic level) differences in student teachers" perceptions of teaching practice related anxieties. These findings indicate that irrespective of gender and year in programme anxiety is a reality student teachers face during teaching practice. There is therefore the need for interventions to address student teachers" teaching practice related anxieties in order to make the teaching practice component of teacher education programme a challenging, relevant and rewarding experience.

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The study investigated the effects of three summary writing strategies; Direct Instruction, Cognitive Strategy and Read-Test Strategy on Senior Secondary School student's achievement in English language summary writing. The study population consists of 12,766 Senior Secondary year two (SS 2) students from Edo South Senatorial District and a sample of 373 students participated in the study. Three research questions which were all hypothesized guided the conduct of the research. A pre-test and post-test quasi experimental design was used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was an Achievement Test in Summary Writing (SATSW) adopted from past West African Examination Council (WAEC) English language Paper 2 question paper. The reliability of the instrument was r.96 with an inter-rater reliability estimate of .89. Both descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequency, mean, standard deviation and ANCOVA were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed significant difference in achievement amongst students taught using the different strategies. The results showed that the experimental group performed better with Direct Instruction Strategy being the most effective for teaching students summary writing. Cognitive Strategy was also found to contribute to students' summary writing than the Read-Test Strategy. Thus, it was recommended that English language teachers should be exposed to training in summary writing strategies like Direct Instructio n and Cognitive Strategy through workshops and seminars with the hope that this would help to enhance students' summary writing skills.