Academic literacy development in an English curriculum : the case of Ho West district

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the curriculum and supplementary materials for the teaching and learning of English in five junior high schools in Ghana to ascertain the extent to which the curriculum promotes academic literacy in the pupils. Hence, five schools were selected by purposive sampling. Four poorly performing schools and a relatively well performing school were selected for the study. Thus, the problem investigated in this study was academic literacy development, with particular reference to English language teaching. The study area was the Ho West district of the Volta Region of Ghana. The study adopted a mixed methods approach which investigated academic literacy development by evaluating the syllabus and textbooks, and by interviewing English teachers in the selected schools. The interview schedule contained both open ended questions for qualitative analysis as well as multiple choice questions based on a four-item Likert scale for quantitative analysis. The study found that the various aspects of the curriculum had shortcomings in adequately supporting the development of academic literacy in the junior high school pupils in Ghana. Moreover, the factors required for critical language awareness were not present in the textbooks.