Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
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Browsing Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education by Author "Adika, G. S. K."
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Item Open Access Analysis of English language errors in the writing of second year students in a Ghanaian university(2021-06-23) Mandor, Evelyn Joyce; Klu, E. K.; Adika, G. S. K.; Lambani, M. N.The writing of undergraduate students in universities across Ghana has been described as pitiable by many researchers. To be able to communicate effectively and succeed in an academic discourse community, a student requires sufficient competence in the use of the English language, which is the medium of instruction in universities across Ghana. However, it is observable that most of the students’ writing in the English language tends to be fraught with some recurrent errors. Data collected were in the form of written compositions. A mixed-method comprising both qualitative and quantitative procedures was used. The qualitative aspect looked at error taxonomies and the quantitative aspect employed statistics to obtain error frequencies. The errors in the writing of Second Year students of a Ghanaian university were analysed using Error Analysis procedures. The findings revealed that students demonstrated poor writing skills with inherent grammatical errors and a lack of cohesion and coherence. A total of 16 error categories were detected with 25% (expression, omission, spelling, capitalisation) of the total errors ranking very high in terms of frequency of occurrence. This was followed by plurality, addition, choice of words and concord making up another 25% of the total errors detected. Errors such as tense, punctuation, preposition, pronoun, faulty parallelism, fragment, wrong transition and article although ranked low, made up a total of 50%. Based on the findings, the study suggested a revision of the academic syllabus and the methods of learning and teaching English language, especially at the tertiary level to enable students to demonstrate competence concerning English language compositions.Item Open Access The emergence of social media discourse among Ghanainan University Students: implications for the acquisition or academic literacy(2017-05-18) Anku, Joyce Senya Ama; Klu, E. K.; Adika, G. S. K.; Mulaudzi, L. M. P.Language, in general, has always been evolving and dynamic; the same can be said of the English language. Spontaneously, but not unexpected though, since the beginning of this 21st century which saw the introduction of the internet, there have been noteworthy manifestations in the structure and use of varied forms of the English language on social media. This study aimed at exploring, describing and explaining the linguistic features associated with the new communicative order – social media – and their communicative functions, vis-à-vis their impact on Ghanaian university students’ acquisition of academic literacy. To do this, the study adopted a qualitative method and an ethnographic approach in understanding the netnographic realities on social media. In addition, the sociocultural theory and the theory of error analysis served as the philosophical underpinnings which guided the research. Participants of the study (largely undergraduate students) were drawn from two universities in Ghana – the University of Ghana, and Valley View University. The total sample size was one hundred and eighty eight (188). It was found that frequent and prolonged use of social media discourse does impact negatively on the academic literacy of students. The findings also indicate that social media use overtime becomes addictive and this directly results in limited time span and low attention span of students. Again, the study found that over engagement on social media discourse leads to a general breakdown in both sentence and discourse structure of academic writing resulting into uncontrolled deviant spellings, omission and misuse of punctuation marks and capitalisation, as well as a high level of colloquialism. Despite these negative influences, it was found that there are some positive potentials of social media that can be harnessed to support academic literacy. The study, thus, recommends that the affordances of social media communication should be retooled to support the teaching and learning of academic literacy.Item Open Access Hedging in the multidisciplinary postgraduate theses of students in a Ghanaian University(2021-06-23) Oyewale - Johnson, Dorian Odolina; Klu, E. K.; Mulaudzi, I. M. P.; Adika, G. S. K.Research on hedging in recent times has concentrated on works of expert writers to the exclusion of neophytes in academic writing. The limited research on hedging in students’ academic writing could thus impede language instructors’ efforts to determine how appro-priately novice writers who happen to be students, employ caution in the making of their claims. There is minimal research on hedging in the Ghanaian context, therefore, the aim of the study was to explore hedging in postgraduate theses across seven disciplines in a Ghanaian university. It explored linguistic strategies that are employed as hedging in the Findings/Discussions, Interpretation/Analysis and Conclusions/Recommendations sec-tions of theses from seven departments of the Schools of Languages, Arts and Performing Arts from a Ghanaian university. The qualitative research method was employed and the study sample comprised postgraduate students’ theses. Forty-two (42) thesis chapters of postgraduate students were selected through multi-stage sampling. Only those who had more than two pages of Findings/Discussions, Interpretation/Analysis and Conclu-sions/Recommendations were considered. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data; and the findings revealed variations in each rhetorical section and confirmed varia-tions across disciplines in the appropriation of hedges. The results also revealed that the most used categories of hedging were modal auxiliaries and compound hedges. It was also established that the Findings/Discussions sections were the most heavily hedged sections; and the most hedged discipline was Philosophy/Classics. The study can be used to enhance postgraduate students’ appropriate use of hedging in writing in Ghana and in other non-native English speaking countries.Item Open Access Range and variability of reporting verbs in Doctoral Theses of Humanities students(2021-07-23) Banini, Shirley Eli; Klu, E. K.; Adika, G. S. K.; Mulaudzi, L. M. P.This study examined the occurrence, use, and function of reporting verbs in the literature review sections of fifty-two (52) doctoral theses written by students in the Humanities, examined and passed by the University of Ghana within the academic period of 2010 to 2018. The focus was on the literature review sections, because in this section of the thesis, the researcher (as the writer) presents the views of other scholars, presents his/her views, and supports them by citing earlier authors, criticising and laying claims using reporting verbs. Reporting verbs are an important rhetorical device in academic writing, which carry different nuances and are used to effectively communicate the writer’s opinions about issues. The appropriate use of reporting verbs in scholarly research, such as a doctoral thesis, is important for the effective communication of the researcher’s critical views on other scholarly works. Social Constructionism and Systemic Functional Grammar were the theoretical underpinnings that guided this largely qualitative study because the use of reporting verbs in the construction of text is a shared experience, negotiated within a social and cultural setting. Data analysis software, AntConc, was used to determine the frequency of reporting verbs and resultant outcomes plotted. The reporting verbs were categorised using Hyland’s (2002) taxonomy. Analysis reveals that reporting verbs in Discourse Acts category were employed more frequently (58.28%) compared to those in Research Acts (28.7%) and Cognitive Acts (13.02%). Students employed a variety of reporting verbs to achieve various discourse functions. It is recommended that lecturers of academic writing use corpus-based data in teaching reporting verbs. Further, training of faculty is recommended to better assist students in the effective use of reporting verbs in the construction of academic texts. Also, at the onset of their doctoral programmes, students must be given refresher courses in the correct use of citations and reporting verbs to make their writing more persuasive and impactful.