ABSTRACT Studies show that the main English writing problem area of students in the second cycle institutions in Ghana relates to violation of English concord rules. Concord rules are taught at all levels of education in Ghana, but unfortunately, most senior high school students have challenges making their sentences concordant. This situation is not different from what the researcher observed in the writing of students of Koforidua Senior High Technical School. The study sets forth to ascert...
ABSTRACT The study has proposed a narrative grammar for reading Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments, and Why Are We So Blest? A narrative grammar is a distinct set of models and narrative categories to analyze a story. Tzvetan Todorov, Claud Levi- Strauss and Vladimir Propp are major proponents of this theory. Each uses a personal GRAMMAR, that is, a distinct set of models and narrative categories to analyze the “story”. This concept involves constants and...
ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the occurrence of code switching between Agona and English among members of the St. James Anglican Church and the Holy Ghost International Church in the Agona District of the Central Region in Ghana to determine the patterns of occurrence in conversational turns. It also describes the social roles that the code mixed languages perform in context. The study concentrates on how meaning is derived from the structure of conversation among bilingual Agonas. The ...
ABSTRACT Islam is one of the major religions of Africa. Islamic issues in society are prominent in some contemporary African fiction, and often these issues are in conflict with social, economic and political forces. This thesis studies the conflict between Islam and the socio-economic and political forces in Ahmadou Kourouma (2000) and Mohammed Naseehu Ali (2005). One observation coming from the study is that Islam succumbs to material realities. Muslim characters often adulterate or renege...
ABSTRACT Employing the transitivity framework of the ideational metafunction, this study explored the language of the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew chapters 5-7, from the perspective of grammar. To ascertain the predominant process types that were used and the participants that roles were assigned to, the study used two out of the three grammatical components that the framework proposes which are the process types and the participants. This was done to show how the grammatical choices...
ABSTRACT This study examined the use of environmental prints as appropriate teaching/learning materials for the teaching of reading in JHS One in rural areas with inadequate teaching/learning materials. The aim of the study was to find out whether an intervention/treatment using environmental prints would improve the reading abilities of learners. The sample of 66 JHS One pupils and two English teachers were from Wurishie AlBadal JHS in Tamale. Data for the study was collected through questio...
ABSTRACT This study gave primary attention to the provision of additional support to Ghanaian English as a legitimate and viable variety of English through the use of progressive aspect, especially in comparison with British English. The study was guided by three objectives which were to explore the use of the progressive aspect in Ghanaian English, ascertain the validity and variability of Ghanaian English through the use of the progressive aspect as well as to determine the similarities and...
ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, linguistic studies on texting have largely focused on person-to-person practices such that the use of text messages in other language domains, for instance the electronic media, is largely under-researched. To fill the gap, the present study examined the discourse of SMS messages posted during radio panel discussions in Ghana in order to determine whether the messages could be labelled as a special discourse type. The study was based on a corpus of approxim...
ABSTRACT Female masculinity is an expression of male gender traits in females. These masculine traits in female characters have received little attention from scholars of Western and Nigerian literary writings when compared to their focus on the socio cultural constructs of females as weak, soft and inferior. This study, therefore, examined different ways by which some female protagonists in selected Shakespearean and Nigerian plays express related masculine attributes with a view to determi...
ABSTRACT The research investigates some selected political speeches delivered by John Evans Atta Mills. The selected speeches span almost every sphere of his political life, including; a campaign speech (as an opposition leader in the run- up to the 2008 elections), an inaugural speech, an independent day speech, a republic day speech and a new year‟s eve message to the nation (all as president). The objective is to unravel the stylistically significant features prevalent in the selected sp...
ABSTRACT The study sought to do a comparative analysis of how two Charismatic preachers (Archbishop Duncan Williams and Pr. Mensa Otabil) use the clause as an interactive grammatical unit to establish interpersonal relationship between themselves and their congregations. The Mood system of the clausal units of four selected sermons was analysed. The fundamental categories of the system of Mood that were analysed are the Mood, Subject, Modality, Tense, Polarity and Vocatives. The analysis ind...
ABSTRACT In the last few decades, genre scholars have shown considerable interest in using Swales’ modified version of the Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model in analyzing academic genres such as the Research Article (RA) which is regarded as the lifeblood that sustains the academic community. Mono-disciplines and multi-sections of the RA such as the abstract, introduction, method, literature review have been duly studied. Despite the contribution of the Research Proposal (RP) to knowledge...
ABSTRACT Although politeness has been well researched in political, medical, media and commercial transactions, it has not been well considered in the area of service delivery in the post offices in Nigeria where it is perceived that the staff exhibit unfriendly attitude to customers. This study, therefore, explores politeness in service encounters in the post offices in Ibadan metropolis with the view to establishing the existence of politeness in the transactions in the establishment, ide...
ABSTRACT Literary productivity in South Africa increased dramatically with the political change from apartheid to multi-racial democracy in 1994. This surge has attracted much interest, with critics trying to map the changes observable on the post-apartheid literary landscape using race and gender. However, adequate attention has not been given to the emergent literature from the political perspective. This study, therefore, examined new themes and forms in selected post-apartheid literature...
ABSTRACT This study investigated cohesion in the texts of final-year senior high school students. The purpose was to determine the types of cohesive devices that the students use, with emphasis on inter-sentential cohesion, as well as the ones they have problems with. In addition, the study aimed at ascertaining the extent to which students' problems with the use of cohesive devices can be attributed to the strategies teachers employ in teaching cohesion. Forty-five essays written by final-ye...