Department of Languages Education
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
1 - 5 of 17
- ItemGrammatical 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)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.
- ItemRead 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)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.
- ItemThe Impact of Reading on Second Language Acquisition: The Case of a Ghanaian Female University College of Education(Language in India, 2020-11-11)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
- ItemAn 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)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.
- ItemRenegotiating 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)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.