African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have been diversely used to perform several functions in the African traditional setting. Among such functions are: confirming opinions, warning, showing regrets, doubts, justifications and many more. This paper seeks to examine some selected proverbs from Chinua Achebe’s novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Significantly, one can conclude that the style of a writer can go a long way in determining the reception and authenticity of his works. Chinua Achebe has extensively employed proverbs in his works as a tool for setting out or revealing his characters, themes and many others. This study is a pragma-stylistic approach to the analysis of proverbs used by Achebe in the selected novels. The researchers focus primarily on the style, meaning and function of the proverbs used in the selected texts. A critical content analysis method is employed for this study to determine the functions of the proverbs within the context of the novel. This study brings to the fore the very nature of African proverbs, specifically the Igbo of Nigeria and reveals the various functions ascribed to these proverbs. This will provide readers with the necessary knowledge on the very reasons why some proverbs are used and will ignite the research impetus of some researchers to further investigate other approaches to proverbs. This study has contributed immensely to the existing literature on pragma-stylistic studies and the understanding of a pragma-stylistic approach as a theoretical concept with a unique focus on analysing African proverbs. Keywords: Achebe, Proverbs, Pragmatics, Pragma-stylistics, Stylistics
Post-independence African plays have been characterized by the disillusionment of playwrights with African reality. Corruption, which is chiefly political, and of other forms, and other pertinent neo-colonial issues have been religiously dealt with by these writers in their creative works. Through the tents of postcolonial theory, this article attempts to analyze Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s Prison Graduates as a satire. A normative research method, which is based entirely on the impressionistic observations of the investigator was used in the data collection. Practically, satire has rightly become a preferred form of writing for various writers to express their disillusionment. In his text, Mawugbe uses satire to create a real African world which looks beyond foreign aids in order to claim African dignity and identity.
Since literature is acknowledged as a reflector of the modern or contemporary society, it is therefore not out of place to claim that a writer’s experiences, community or society influences his or her work. Individual writers have pertinent themes that drive their focus in their creative works and these themes more often align with the society. Hence, to separate the society from literature is to take life from an individual. Achebe’s quest to present the theme of social disintegration and misplaced cultural identity undoubtedly presents the setting of the Nigerian community to his readers. This paper aimed at investigating the techniques that Achebe employs and critically reviewing his presentation of the African society and cultural values in his creative work; Things Fall Apart. Again, it analyzed and appreciated the relevance, the creativity and inventiveness of African writers in writing on the various subject matters and themes that reside in the African society and depict the African values or culture. The findings revealed that Achebe successfully uses diction, figurative language, proverbs, characterization and narrative technique to project the African society and cultural values.
Adhering to the rules governing the writing of multiple-choice test items will ensure quality and validity. However, realizing this ideal could be challenging for non-native English language teachers and students. This is especially so for non-native English language teachers because developing test items in a language that neither they nor their students use as their mother tongue raises a multitude of issues related to quality and validity. A descriptive study on this problem was conducted at a Technical University in Ghana which focused on item writing flaws in a communication skills test. The use of multiple-choice test in Ghanaian universities has increased over the last decade due to increasing student intake. A 20-item multiple-choice test in communication skills was administered to 110 students. The test items were analyzed using a framework informed by standard item writing principles based on the revised taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing guides by Haladyna, Downing and Rodriguez (2002). The facility and discrimination index (DI) was calculated for all the items. In total, 60% of the items were flawed based on standard items writing principles. The most violated guideline was wording stems negatively. Pearson correlation analysis indicated a weak relationship between the difficulty and discrimination indices. Using the discrimination indices of the flawed items showed that 84.6 % of them had discrimination indices below the optimal level of 0.40 and above. The lowest DI was recorded by an item with which was worded negatively. The mean facility of the test was 45%. It was observed that the flawed items were more difficult than the non-flawed items. The study suggested that test items must be properly reviewed before they are used to assess students’ knowledge.
African Writers gave little importance to the role of women in their literary works. The likes of Chinua Achebe and Ayi kwei Armah gave prominence to women characters. This is seen in Ayi Kwei Armah's text Fragments. This article therefore examines the important role given by the author of this novel to the woman character, Naana. A critical content analysis has been engaged in to ascertain her roles in the narrative and thematic developments of the story. That is, it studies how Naana is used as a tool to bring about the success of the novel. A study of this nature has to do with gender. Thus, the underlying theories of this paper are Marxist feminist criticism and feminist literary criticism.
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