ABSTRACT This thesis examines the elements of orality and performance in modern African poetry, particularly Osundare’s selected poems. The aim is to observe how Osundare uses the elements of orality in selected poems in The Eye of the Earth and Songs of the Marketplace volumes to present the African human experience. The theoretical framework for this research is the formalistic approach. The analysis is based on ten selected poems each from Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth and Son...
ABSTRACT This study examines the levels of acceptability of some lexical forms and grammatical features identified in the literature as Ghanaian English. It also discusses the recognised or acceptable indexical markers of the variety. The study explains the phenomenon of acceptability through Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes. Employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, the researcher sampled 400 respondents for a survey and 20 participants for interviews. ...
ABSTRACT Discourse on the existence of Ghanaian English (GhE) has provided several works on the description of GhE pronunciations, especially vowels (for example, Bobda, 2000; Huber, 2008; Lomotey, 2010; Ofori, Duah & Mintah, 2014). But the major challenge is that most of these studies, impressionistically, have provided different numbers of the English monophthongal vowels used in the Ghanaian context and often deny the existence of any long vowel or certain English vowels like /ʊ ʌ ə ɜ:...
This study was a comparative investigation into the nature of difficulties in learning English by the secondary school students of Provincial and Federal government schools in N.W.F.P (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa). The objectives of the study were (1)To find out the level of difficulties of secondary school students of Provincial and Federal government schools of N.W.F.P (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa) in tenses, active and passives voices, direct and indirect narrations, conjunctions, prepositions, articles...
This study was conducted to investigate the factors affecting the learning of English of the secondary school students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The objectives of the study were (1) To find out the factors affecting the learning of English at secondary level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and (2) To provide a base for improvement of teaching English as a second language at the secondary school level in Pakistan. The population of the study was comprised of all the English teachers of twenty four Provinc...
The present study was conducted to investigate the errors of Pakistani school students in prepositions and articles. The main focus of the study was to analyse the errors of students in articles and prepositions. The sample of the study was comprised of 100 randomly selected students from government secondary schools of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. The instrument used in the study was the essays written by 8th class students in their annual examination. The annual examination papers in the subject of ...
ABSTRACT This study investigated the factors associated with mass failure of students’ in English language in Senior Secondary Schools using four schools in Ijebu-North Local Government, Ogun-State, Nigeria. The study employed qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data was collected using classroom observation, questionnaire and documentary review. Result of the study reveals that students were highly motivated to learn English for future expectations such...
Abstract Identity construction is an aspect of language formation and or representation. Extant literatures abound on identity construction in advertisements, political and computer mediated discourses, which have variously identified forms and nature of identity creations of groups. These studies however have not adequately accounted for identity creation of women in Nigerian music videos. Hence, this study investigates the way women are represented and constructed in selected Nigerian pop m...
Abstract That pop music is one of the popular genres of music with much rhythm and harmony and its emphasis on romantic love songs is not news. What needs clarification is the level of interface in terms of meaning making between the verbal and visual aspects of pop music videos. This study thus investigates visual-verbal interface in select Nigerian pop music videos in order to determine the extent to which both visual and verbal modes encode and enhance meanings in the music. Three popular...
Abstract Public sphere discourses of government ministers-citizen interactions are common political discourse events in Nigeria. There is seemingly nothing unfamiliar about political discourses, but what needs clarification is the place of context and contextualization in encoding and decoding intentions/meanings, especially in public sphere discourses of government ministers-citizen interactions in Nigeria. Aspects of Presupposition in Jacob Mey’s Pragmatics that deal with context was adop...
ABSTRACT Several issues have shaped political discourse in Nigeria since her independence. Speeches read from scripts and other texts as well as various media forums have been major sources of data. Political interactions, dealing with spontaneous discourse/speech events have hardly been subject of discourse. Recently one of the platforms that transverse the Nigerian political sphere is the National Good Governance Tour (NGGT) of Nigeria; this study therefore, explores language use in the tou...
ABSTRACT Official interactions between government ministers and the public are common political discourse events in democratic Nigeria. Previous studies on political discourse have examined language forms such as metaphor, which function as persuasive devices in ceremonial speeches, campaigns, manifestos and parliamentary debates, without adequate attention paid to the persuasiveness of discourse strategies in government minister-public interactions. This study, therefore, examined discursiv...
ABSTRACT This Research Work focused on the Study into the Effects of Grammatical Errors in Secondary School Students’ English Essays. The research was conducted on essays written by thirty (30) Students of the Secondary Schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC). The analysis of the essays revealed the deficiencies of some of the Students in using English tense. In the use of the present tense, for instance, Students had more difficulties in the use of present tense compare to the use ...
ABSTRACT The acquisition and learning of a language involves understanding and mastery of what constitutes its grammar. The research analyzes the uses of prepositions in two selected Lagos schools, Eva Adelaja Senior Girls Grammar School and Eben Noble College. The sample of the study consisted of 40 students. The data elicitation instrument was a writing task in which students were asked to write an argumentative essay. The quantitative findings showed 12 prepositions (to, on, about, in, of,...
The rapid development of human society has a great influence on the most important tool of communication—language. The modern way of living goes faster and new trends are also reflected in the development of language in a form of various new words and expressions as well as the improvement, and facilitation of grammar structure. Comparison of these two linguistic areas shows that vocabulary grows rapidly that the communicative function of language claims more novel and concise expressions i...