Glossophobia, an individual’s anxiety of public speaking, has been observed to be a common phenomenon among students. The present study explores factors associated with glossophobia among ESL students of a tertiary institution in Upper-West Ghana, the Dr. Hilla Limann Technical University, Wa and makes recommendations for improvement in their public speaking skills. The study combined both quantitative and qualitative research approaches in an opinion poll involving 46 participants from the Level 300 class of the Secretaryship and Management Studies of the Business School. Participants acknowledged the importance of public speaking, but conceded that at some point in their student lives, when they had to speak in public, glossophobia prevented them from making a good impression on the audience. Speaking English before a crowd was identified as the most dreaded experience. Low self-confidence in speaking in public; lack of constant speaking experience and lack of knowledge in public speaking; fear of making mistakes and being laughed at; inadequate preparation and timidity were also identified as challenges affecting participants’ ability to speak English in public. To help students overcome that phobia, the study recommends that lecturers should adopt an interactive approach combined with the appropriate communication strategies to promote positive attitudes and create the desirable atmosphere for boosting students’ confidence. Lecturers should also organise seminars on public speaking skills and encourage regular individual oral presentation in class so students can practise to develop positive attitudes towards public speaking.

Every human being, in addition to having his or her own personal identity, has a sense of who he or she is, in relation to the larger society. It seems that after independence is achieved by African states, one main question arises: What is the new society, culture, and identity? Africans are faced with cultural clash owing to the fact that they have been too much exposed to the colonizer's (European's) way of life. The identity of most Africans is gradually eroded as there is a proliferation of Westernization. This content analysis design paper, employing Jomo Kenyatta's short story, "The Gentlemen of the Jungle", as the main data, has examined the main theme, post-colonialism, from four sub-perspectives. These perspectives are: alienation and exclusion, retributive justice, the colonizer's language as a tool of dominance, and double standard and abuse of power. The significance of this paper is to facilitate the shaping of new identities in African communities after the obliterating of colonialism and European imperialism. The essay is structured into four main parts: introduction, the method, the themes, and the conclusion.

<p><em>This work assesses the effects of</em><em> </em><em>family background of second language learners on their academic writing competence in English. A cursory</em><em> </em><em>study of some examination scripts of first-year students reveals some poor writing skills of students in areas such as concord, spelling, capitalization, and fragmentation errors.30 participants were selected from a class of 121 students</em><em> </em><em>from the Ghana Baptist University College, a private</em><em> </em><em>institution in Kumasi, Ghana. Initially, the class of 121 was sorted out into three groups—those who said they used only English at home, those who said they used only Ghanaian language(s) at home, and those who said they used both English and Ghanaian language(s) at home. Each group was further divided along gender lines and 5 students from each of the 6 sub-groups were picked randomly. The participants</em><em> </em><em>were then made to write a sit-in assessment on a topic and were graded by an independent assessor. The findings of the study reveal that the performance of the bilingual English and</em><em> </em><em>Ghanaian language learners outweighed those of their contemporaries. The study also revealed a positive correlation between attitudes of parents about English and learners’ academic writing skills. These have pedagogical and theoretical implications for the teaching and learning of English as a second language in Ghana. Language proficiency involves the development of skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All these four aspects of language development are equally vital in the language learning process, but the current paper focuses on the development of writing skills by second language learners of English in Ghana.</em></p><p><em><br /></em><em></em></p>

Corrective Feedback and its Effects on Memoranda and Letters of Students of Sunyani Technical University, Ghana 1. Introduction and Background One of the earliest definitions on CF was given by Chaudron (1977:31) who considered it as "any reaction of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance." Synonyms of CF which have been used by other authors include: error correction, negative evidence, and negative feedback (Méndez et al., 2010:241). Han (2008) as cited in Méndez et al., (2010:241) proposes that error correction implies an evident and direct correction, whereas CF is a generic way of providing some clues, or eliciting some correction, besides the direct correction made by the teacher. Han (2008) has thus, conceptualised the term error correction as an immediate and a palpable way of correcting errors and CF as broad term of offering feedback on students' errors. Lightbown and Spada (1999:171-172) on their part define corrective feedback as: '…any indication to the learners that their use of the target language is incorrect.' This indication according to Lightbown and Spada (1999) could take the form of both explicit and implicit responses geared towards helping the learner attain correct usage of the target language. Ellis, Loewen, and Erlam(2006:340) define CF as: '… the form of responses to learner utterances that contain error. The responses can consist of (a) an indication that an error has been committed, (b) provision of the correct target language form, or (c) metalinguistic information about the nature of the nature of the error, or any combination of these.' (2006:340). Ferris (2003) has drawn a line between explicit or direct CF and implicit or indirect CF and has defined the direct or explicit one as a CF providing the correct linguistic form or structure by the teacher to the student by scripting it above the linguistic error. This may comprise the crossing out of an unnecessary structure-morpheme, word, phrase, clause, or sentence-; the insertion of a missing structure; or writing the correct form or structure. She has accordingly defined the indirect or implicit CF as indicating that an error has been made without clearly mentioning the type of error or writing the correct form (Ferris, 2003). This may take the form of underlining or circling the error, recording in the margin of the script the number of errors made in a given line, or using a code to show where the error has been made and what type of error it is (Ferris and Roberts, 2001). Here, students are left to reread and subsequently edit the errors in their scripts rather than the teacher indicating it clearly. Correction of errors in Second Language Teaching and Learning has long been a contentious issue. Earlier, Fanselow (1977) had recommended the provision of effective CF-isolating the error and giving explicit information. Conversely, earlier studies by Allwright (1975), Chaudron (1977) Long (1977), and Zamel (1985) revealed that the provision of corrective feed...

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