Abstract

This study examined the effects of stylistics and moral philosophical approaches on students’ achievement and attitude to poetic Literature in English in some secondary schools in Kabba/Bunu, Kogi State. It also investigated the moderating effects of gender on the dependent variables. The study adopted pretest-posttest control group quasiexperimental design with a 3x2 factorial matrix. The participants in the study were 232 senior secondary II students from six public schools purposively selected from Kabba/Bunu Local Government. Two intact classes were assigned to each of the treatment and control groups. Two main instruments used in the study were students’ achievement test in poetry (r=0.89) and students’ attitude to poetry questionnaire (r=0.89). Six hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Scheffe post hoc analysis. The result showed that treatment has significant main effect on students’ achievement in poetry
(F (2, 219) =130.20; P<0.05; ?2 =0.54). Students in the moral philosophical approach ( X = 46.44) performed better than students in the stylistics approach ( X =44.53) who in turn did better than those in the control group (X = 21.78). There is no significant main effect of gender on students’ achievement and attitude to poetry. The interaction effect of treatment and gender on students’ achievement and attitude were not significant. It is concluded that moral philosophical and stylistics Approaches facilitated students’ achievement in poetry better than the information-based Approach.