Department of Languages Education

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An Exploration of the Correlation between First Year Students’ Performance in Communicative Skills and their Performance in English in the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination
(Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2016-02) Torto, T. Richard; Boakyr, Jantuah Stephen; Yeboah, Amoah Napoleon; Peprah, Owusu Judith; Otchere, Gloria
This paper explores the relationship between students’ scores in English Language (EL) in senior high school (SHS) and those they obtain in Communicative Skills (CS), a course at the university level based on English for Academic Purpose (EAP). Over the years, students’ performance in CS, which is geared towards sharpening students’ language skills, has become a major concern to both students and lecturers at the University of Cape Coast. Nonetheless, current literature on CS is bereft of connecting students’ output in EL with that of CS. This study therefore attempted to bridge this lacuna by employing statistical analysis of students’ entry grades in EL and the grade they subsequently obtain in CS to extrapolate the link between their scores in EL and CS. The analysis shows that although there is a positive correlation between students’ score in EL and CS, that correlation is not significant, suggesting that other factors like students’ attitude and lecturers’ teaching style and competence may be responsible for the grades students acquire in CS. The findings have implications for further research and CS pedagogy.
Grammatical Cohesion in Teacher Trainees’ Argument Essay: A Linguistics Analysis of Argument essay of a Private College of Education in Ghana
(IRA International Journal of Education and Multidisciplinary Studies, 2016-04) Anto, Sylvester Kwabena; Josephine, Brew Daniels
This study examines grammatical cohesion in teacher trainees’ argument essay. Twenty scripts of teacher trainees’ argument essay were purposely selected from a total of hundred essays which were assessed by two inter-raters and used as data for the study. The study basically applied a qualitative method of analysis to the data. The theoretical framework that underpins the study is Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) influential theory of cohesion in English. Three major findings were made. First, teacher trainees frequently use reference and conjunctions to achieve coherence in their argument essay. Second, a good quality essay cannot be judged on the number of cohesive markers present, linguistic features such as grammatical rules of concord and verb tense are equally important. The study further showed that the least used cohesive devices are substitution and ellipsis. The findings of this study have implications for pedagogy and further research.
A Stylistic Defence of Ideology Through Language Use in Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
(www.iiste.org, 2017) Adogpa, James Nsoh
Style and ideology in any literary work are inseparable and go a long way to portray one’s identity. This work has looked at how Chinua Achebe stylistically defended his ideology of using the English language to carry his African experiences in Anthills of the Savannah. It was discovered that Achebe made a blend of three language modes to stylistically defend his ideology. Achebe’s ability to handle the three modes of the English language unquestionably demonstrates his stylistic defense of twisting the language to suit his needs to carry his African experiences.
The Lost Dignity: The Reading of Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night
(www.iiste.org, 2018) Essuman, Jonathan; Meni-Glover, Nathaniel
This paper unravels the dark side of apartheid system through the analysis of Alex La Guma’s novella; A Walk in the Night. The analysis brings out how La Guma uses his literary texts under study to reveal to his readership the lost dignity of the oppressed. This novella reveals to readers the atrocities that were perpetrated against the non- whites in South Africa. This study highlights the restrictions placed on African workers under the oppressive Apartheid system and its effects on the psyche of the non-whites in South Africa have been given credible space in the novella. There is seen in this novella a fictionalization of the different forms of maltreatments that non- whites suffered during the Apartheid regime. There is also seen in the novella a relentless effort by La Guma to protest against the Apartheid era. The life-styles of the non-whites clearly indicate that the Apartheid system really took away the dignity of the non-whites in South Africa. Keywords: Alex La Guma, Apartheid, South Africa, Oppression, Dignity
Read or Perish: Reading Habits among Students and its Effect on Academic Performance: A Case Study of Eastbank Senior High School - Accra.
(Library Philosophy and Practice, 2018) Anto, Kwabena Sylvester; Ameyaw, Kwame Samuel
The paper was to examine reading habit among students and its effect on academic performance: using Eastbank Senior High School in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana as a case study. A questionnaire was employed for data gathering. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study revealed that 45.19% of the respondents recognized the importance of reading in their studies. The study revealed further that reading habits have affected the majority of students in their learning. The findings reported that the lack of conducive home environment hinders their reading habit t when they are at home. Based on the findings it has been recommended that the school should design a timetable for library hours to allow students to go to the library at least one and half hours in each day. Parents should help their children to have a serene reading environment when they are at home. Keywords: Academic Performance, Eastbank ,Ghana, Home environment, Reading habits.
African Masculinities: Discussing the men in Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2013) and Adebayo’s Stay with Me (2017)
(Nairobi Journal, 2020) Ben -Daniel, Faith; Glover-Meni , Nathaniel
This essay undertakes an often-overlooked aspect of gender anatomy of African literature, bringing to the fore the challenges faced by a segment of African men. Using masculinity theories, it exposes instances of fake men who cling to hegemony as the pathway to achieve glory, while hiding their infirmities—impotency and sterility. The paper makes the case that the concept of African masculinity should be open up to debate in order to bring to the fore tensions associated with it. It articulates the position that mimicry should no longer be used as a power and glory mask to overlook tensions in many families often leading to tragic consequences granted that African men were to be innovative to adopt Western health standards. The discussion is achieved by looking at two key roles of males in African societies that places an unnecessary burden on them—as men in the sense that they should be able to biologically produce children and men as heads of their respective homes. The paper concludes that as long as these masculine roles remain rigid without considering that there are men who cannot perform these functions due to no fault of theirs, their female counterparts cannot be free of unnecessary and unfair socio-cultural responsibilities
A Tool of Success: A Critical Content Analysis of Naana’s Character in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments
(Scietific Research Publishing, 2020-01-07) Ampofo, Zipporah; Essuman, Jonathan; Arhin, Ekua; Ansah, Richard
African Writers gave little importance to the role of women in their literary works. The likes of Chinua Achebe and Ayi kwei Armah gave prominence to women characters. This is seen in Ayi Kwei Armah’s text Fragments. This article therefore examines the important role given by the author of this novel to the woman character, Naana. A critical content analysis has been engaged in to ascertain her roles in the narrative and thematic developments of the story. That is, it studies how Naana is used as a tool to bring about the success of the novel. A study of this nature has to do with gender. Thus, the underly- ing theories of this paper are Marxist feminist criticism and feminist literary criticism.
Defining the African Writer’s Duties—Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s Grave Yard People
(www.iiste.org, 2020-05-31) Essuman,Jonathan; Ben-Daniels, Faith; Ohene-Adu, K. B.
Over the years, the duty of the African writer has clearly been a cause of many debates. Whereas one school of thought believes that the writer has whatever duty he or she creates or chooses, another school of thought believes that even the tag, ‘African writer,’ should not even be used as a form of identification in any platform. However, this paper does not seek to debunk or argue out any of these reasons. It rather highlights how the works of writers map out certain duties that they as writers perform consciously or unconsciously within their creative works. In order to achieve this, Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s play, Grave Yard People, is used as the main reference point to identify and discuss the roles of the African writer as a historian, grass-root activist and entertainer. In order to prove that this assertion is not only identifiable with Mawugbe’s work, other writers within and outside Africa whose works showcase these varied duties are also discussed. In the conclusion of this paper, it is proven that the duties of African writers are not static but metamorphose with trends and developments of emerging societies. The words—African writers and storytellers are used interchangeably to refer to African writers
Renegotiating the Terms of African Womanism: Binwell Sinyangwe’s A Cowrie of Hope and Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu
(Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 2020-08-31) Ben -Daniel, Faith
Over the years African women have struggled for space and recognition in all spheres of human life. Writers from Efua Theodora Sutherland, Buchi Emecheta and Ama Ata Aidoo down to Chimamanda N. Adichie, Lola Shoneyin and Ayobami Adebayo have expressed African women’s struggles from divergent viewpoints. As such, this paper returns to the concept of African womanism as created by Clenora Hudson-Weems and endeavours to dissect how Binwell Sinyangwe’s A Cowrie of Hope and Neshani Andreas The Purple Violet of Oshaantu engages this concept in order to create awareness of the African woman’s disposition. Subsequently, this paper focuses on the new approaches to the discussion of the African woman’s liberation. It takes a look at the face of African womanism as a movement that advocates the liberation of the African woman within her cultural niche. It also discusses how Sinyangwe and Andreas address the negative factors oppressing the African woman and also suggest ways of liberation by renegotiation.
The Impact of Reading on Second Language Acquisition: The Case of a Ghanaian Female University College of Education
(Language in India, 2020-11-11) Yeboah, Amoah Napoleon; Annan, Coker Wilhelmina
Over the years, students have been encouraged to read extensively. New techniques of teaching English reading skills in the classroom have also been devised (Iqbal, et al. 2015). Learners are taught to scan for the recognition of some visual forms such as numbers, words, or phrases, and also how to read closely for visual semantic process to finally acquire information (Carver, 1992). The present study therefore aims to identify, any form of impact that reading has on students’ proficiency in English Language as a second language in Ghana. Questionnaires of both open and close ended questions were administered to fifty (50) first year College of Education female teacher trainees. First, the results of the analysis revealed that English language has now become the language spoken by students not only in school as expected, but also at home, and with friends when they are out of school. Secondly, an improvement in the reading culture and the attitude of students towards reading is also indicated. Finally, this study confirms that extensive reading in a target language enriches the readers’ level of proficiency in the second language being acquired. It speeds up the process of acquisition from vocabulary to writing. Some implications have also been suggested
Identity Crisis of the Ghanaian Learner of English as a Second Language
(Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2021) Adogpa, James Nsoh; Arthur, Rebecca; Campion, Baba Charles
The culture of every nation carries some influence on its education, language being the key. The language policy in Ghana’s education, however, gives limited space to the development of the indigenous languages which have influence on the personality of the learner. The language policy has created identity crisis for learners. This crisis comes as a result of parents’ expectation, pedagogical issues and a mixture of British Standard English and that of American Standard English. The lack of political will to assign roles to the indigenous languages and improper supervision of the language policy in education has led to the linguistic identity crisis: national identity crisis, cultural identity crisis and professional identity crisis. There is a need for linguists to find a way out to solve the Ghanaian learner of English as a second language identity crisis for better academic performance.
African play, African identity, humour, Mawugbe,
(Ajote, 2021) Arhin,Ato Kwamina; Essuman, Jonathan; Arhin, Ekua
Adhering to the rules governing the writing of multiple-choice test items will ensure quality and validity. However, realizing this ideal could be challenging for non-native English language teachers and students. This is especially so for non-native English language teachers because developing test items in a language that neither they nor their students use as their mother tongue raises a multitude of issues related to quality and validity. A descriptive study on this problem was conducted at a Technical University in Ghana which focused on item writing flaws in a communication skills test. The use of multiple-choice test in Ghanaian universities has increased over the last decade due to increasing student intake. A 20-item multiple-choice test in communication skills was administered to 110 students. The test items were analyzed using a framework informed by standard item writing principles based on the revised taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing guides by Haladyna, Downing and Rodriguez (2002). The facility and discrimination index (DI) was calculated for all the items. In total, 60% of the items were flawed based on standard items writing principles. The most violated guideline was wording stems negatively. Pearson correlation analysis indicated a weak relationship between the difficulty and discrimination indices. Using the discrimination indices of the flawed items showed that 84.6 % of them had discrimination indices below the optimal level of 0.40 and above. The lowest DI was recorded by an item with which was worded negatively. The mean facility of the test was 45%. It was observed that the flawed items were more difficult than the non-flawed items. The study suggested that test items must be properly reviewed before they are used to assess students’ knowledge.
Who is a father? Deconstructing the machismo of fatherhood in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (2015)
(Literary & Cultural Studies, 2021-03-29) Ben -Daniel, Faith
This paper deconstructs the patriarchal institution of fatherhood that tends to present fatherhood as a machismo that the family must rely on for its sustenance and survival. The paper argues that the patriarchal ideology of fatherhood which is backed by culture obstructs the psyche of women and thereby affect their ability to rise to the challenge of being sole care givers for their children when the circumstance or situation calls for it, and by their actions affect the children who are at the receiving end of parenting. The study refers to Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction to show how the conflicting forces within the traditional concept of fatherhood serve to dissipate its seeming definiteness and undermine its presupposed priority in a model of parenthood. The study builds its argument by relying on the aspect of the deconstruction theory which posits that appearance is more relevant than essence. (Stanford, 2006) This study is conducted using Chigozie Obioma’s novel, The Fishermen, as the main reference text. However, references are made to other texts where necessary
Satire in post-independence African plays: A study of Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s Prison Graduates (2015)
(Advance Humanities, 2021-04-29) Essuman, Jonathan; Ben-Daniels, Faith; Ohene-Adu, Kingsley
Post-independence African plays have been characterized by the disillusionment of playwrights with African reality. Corruption, which is chiefly political, and of other forms, and other pertinent neo-colonial issues have been religiously dealt with by these writers in their creative works. Through the tents of postcolonial theory, this article attempts to analyze Efo Kodjo Mawugbe's Prison Graduates as a satire. A normative research method, which is based entirely on the impressionistic observations of the investigator was used in the data collection. Practically, satire has rightly become a preferred form of writing for various writers to express their disillusionment. In his text, Mawugbe uses satire to create a real African world which looks beyond foreign aids in order to claim African dignity and identity.
A Pragma-Stylistic Approach to Analysing Proverbs: A Review of Some Selected Proverbs in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God
(Noyam, 2021-08-08) Essuman, Jonathan; ResCue, Elvis; Yeboah,Okyeso Ama Philomena
African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have been diversely used to perform several functions in the African traditional setting. Among such functions are: confirming opinions, warning, showing regrets, doubts, justifications and many more. This paper seeks to examine some selected proverbs from Chinua Achebe’s novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Significantly, one can conclude that the style of a writer can go a long way in determining the reception and authenticity of his works. Chinua Achebe has extensively employed proverbs in his works as a tool for setting out or revealing his characters, themes and many others. This study is a pragma-stylistic approach to the analysis of proverbs used by Achebe in the selected novels. The researchers focus primarily on the style, meaning and function of the proverbs used in the selected texts. A critical content analysis method is employed for this study to determine the functions of the proverbs within the context of the novel. This study brings to the fore the very nature of African proverbs, specifically the Igbo of Nigeria and reveals the various functions ascribed to these proverbs. This will provide readers with the necessary knowledge on the very reasons why some proverbs are used and will ignite the research impetus of some researchers to further investigate other approaches to proverbs. This study has contributed immensely to the existing literature on pragma-stylistic studies and the understanding of a pragma-stylistic approach as a theoretical concept with a unique focus on analysing African proverbs
Violence, the language of the oppressor and the oppressed: Alex La Guma’s The Stone Country (1967)
(Crewe,England by Steadfast OA, 2022) Essuman,Jonathan
The 19 th century invasion and domination of Africa by Europe was informed by capitalism and the quest for economic domination. Thus, European colonization of Africa is better described as a surrogate of capitalism. In order to achieve economic domination in South Africa, colonial authority institutionalized different methods of discrimination and oppression thus racism became an important weapon for the colonization of the country. This paper sought to investigate the very element of violence that colonizers perpetrated on the natives of South Africa and to bring to the fore how the protest writer—Alex La Guma—skillfully uses his style of writing to protest the oppressive system. This was done by adopting a critical content analysis of the primary text; The Stone Country. However, other secondary materials were consulted to aid in the analysis of the text. It was discovered that the minority whites used violence in two main forms; political and social. This paper concluded that the marginalized were mainly maltreated not because they offended the whites but for the purpose of socio-political and socio-economic domination, they became victims of violent oppressions and hence recommended that such atrocities could only be fought against if more and more writers use their skill of writing to protest against such system.
Studying Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve from a Ghanaian Context
(PROJECT MUSE, 2023) Ben -Daniel, Faith
This article outlines the practical pedagogical approach used in the teaching of Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve in a Ghanaian university, and how the chosen approach, which involves some amount of “enactment” of the text, guides students in focusing on the nuances encountered as part of their study of the text under the “World Literature” course. This article highlights how professors incorporate “enactment” as an approach to raise and sustain students’ interest in the text and to further guide students in identifying and discussing universal subject matters such as marriage, misogyny, and human fellowship from the text. Employing enactment creates in students a sense of ownership of the text and involvement in its study. The discussion concludes by highlighting the importance of maintaining such foreign texts in the academic curriculum, but not losing sight of the challenges academic faculties face by doing so

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