Studies on writing, thus, become crucial because when students make the transition from Secondary School to a Tertiary Institution, they encounter many challenges. One of them is the writing of B.A projects. Most of these undergraduate students both in L1 (English as a first language) and L2 (English as a second language) still find it difficult to argue, discuss or evaluate competently as well as persuasively in English essay writing. The present study aimed at exploring metadiscoursal choice and its influence on the success of students’ academic writing. The study was conducted within the framework of Appraisal Theory. The data was randomly generated from the written essays by thirty selected Level 400 students both from Umaru Musa Yar’adua University and Al-Qalam University Katsina. Also, the data was descriptively alaysed and presented. It was discovered that six (6) of the essays do not contain the relevant elements for this study, thus excluded from the analysis. To achieve the main objective of this study, the first six categories of the most successful essays and the least successful ones were taken for in-depth analysis. They were analysed paragraph by paragraph and then each interactional metadiscourse element was separately discussed as a whole. The findings showed that many of the students were not exposed to these elements, thus, they write academic essay the way they speak. It is against these findings that the present study unravels that embedding the teaching of metadiscourse in cumulative learning practices could consequently empower students to develop both linguistically and intellectually.
English language in Nigeria has the status as an official language that is used in local and international correspondences. One aspect of English grammar that is very hard for second language users including Nigerians to master is prepositions. Not only that English prepositions difficult, they are also the most frequently used items in newspapers that play an important role to signal political and cultural discourses. This study aims to describe the usage and communicative functions of spatial prepositions “in, on and at” in the headlines of four major Nigerian newspapers. Primarily, to achieve that the present study adopted Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics. Data were collected through the analyses of 21 headlines from four selected major Nigerian newspapers. The findings revealed that Vanguard, a major Nigerian newspaper, has the highest percentage of the usage of target prepositions (26.86%), seconded by Punch (24.92%), followed by the Sun (24.27%), and lastly the lowest percentage, The Nation (23.95%). Also, it was revealed from the study that newspaper editors preferred to use preposition “at” (indicating specific location) but replaced it with preposition “in” (indicating broader location). Moreover, despite the frequent usage of preposition “in” in replacement of preposition “at”, they also preferred the forward position that expresses uncertainty compared to mid-ward and backward positions. This study concludes that people can be united ideologically especially on issues that foster nationalism through the use of newspaper headlines since newspaper headline is a new form of discourse that may initiate, sustain, and shape the political and other national agenda.
The paper examines meaning extension in communication among male youths in some northern states such as Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Zamfara. The variables under study comprise of words, phrases and sentences in English and Hausa languages. The paper also examines the expressions’ literal and contextual meanings and how they are used among the educated and uneducated (western education) youths. The data gathered by the researchers through observation are twenty five (25) samples, and were further presented and analysed using descriptive method. The findings revealed that the youths use the expressions in a conversation to make it socially decorated and show fancy in conversation among them.
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