Abstract:
The problem of form two students of Tema Technical Institute in the use of concord
cannot be overemphasized. Eighty percent (80%) of the students cannot use concord
correctly. This is seen in students’ written exercises, conversations, class discussions,
as well as asking or responding to oral questions. Thus, this study sought to firstly
identify the causes of concord errors in English language among form two students of
Tema Technical Institute and use the results of the study to make recommendation to
the stakeholders in education as to how to improve the performance of students and
other learners of English language. One hundred and thirty-nine (139) students were
sampled for this study using the process of random sampling. Pre and post tests were
taken by sampled students, frequencies and percentages were then run to analyze their
overall performance as well as their performance per type of concord. Findings
indicted that students had poor knowledge on the right use of subject-verb agreement.
Intervention process employed by the researcher however improved their
performance. Besides, five (5) teachers were sampled to collate responses on how to
explore the causes of poor performance of form two students of Tema Technical
School in English Concord. All teachers were of the view that the frequent speaking
of English language has a direct influence on students’ performance in English
concord. According to them, when students frequently use the English Language in
communication, they get use to the syntax of the language and then become familiar
with it. It is recommended among others that the Ministry of Education and the
Ghana Education Service should ensure that only trained teachers are engaged in
teaching children starting from the primary level of education. In addition, the Ghana
Education Service should supply each pupil with requisite English books to aid
comprehension of the English language as a whole with extra focus on the use of
notional concord. This will help prepare pupils at the pre secondary level adequately
before moving on to the secondary level.
Description:
A Thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education and Communication,
submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba
OCTOBER, 2020