Do Students of Mining and Allied Engineering Programmes have any Problems in English

Abstract

In recent times, concerns about the falling standard of English among university students in Ghana have generated many studies, which have focused mainly on analysis of errors in the English of students, using test-based extracted data such as student examination scripts or students’ responses to questionnaires and interviews specially designed for the purpose. These studies have usually centred on undergraduate students but none has involved the students of University of Mines and Technology (UMaT). This paper studies the standard of English among undergraduates of UMaT, who are all students of mining and allied engineering programmes. Unlike previous studies, the data comprise 498 faulty sentences selected from comments written by the students on their lecturers’ teaching performance. This source of data is not test-based because the students write the comments anonymously, at their leisure and without knowing that the errors they commit could be used to assess their competence level in English. The comments therefore reflect the English that the students normally know. The faults detected in the comments are categorised into nine error types and the frequency of occurrence calculated for each category. Samples from each category are tabulated and analysed while assigning plausible reasons for the errors and suggesting corrections. The analysis shows that the most frequently occurring errors involve wrong register (wrong tone of language and vocabulary misuse) and wrong concord (subject-verb disagreement) while the least frequently occurring ones involve wrong punctuation and capitalisation as well as wrong adjective, adverb and pronoun usage. The findings indicate that the students have difficulties in expressing  themselves in formal, written English owing to limited lexicon and inadequate knowledge in English grammar, usage and style. To reverse the situation, it is suggested that the Communication Skills course be extended beyond the current first year of undergraduate study and given more emphasi.