Abstract:
The study examined morphosyntatic structure of WhatsApp chats in Prampram Senior
High School with concentration on selected classes and students in the school. The
research was conducted qualitatively through questionnaire, WhatsApp chats and
students’ compositions from class workbooks. The data collected were screenshots of
students’ WhatsApp chats and exercises which were analyzed textually and
thematically. The study was basically anchored on the structure of WhatsApp language,
comprising standard and non – standard forms of the official, academic language in
Ghana, English Language. These words and sentence structures are made up of
acronyms, abbreviations, spoken word language forms, inversion, pidgin and
vernacular. It also found that, these words and sentence structures were transferred to
academic work in the school, where in essay writing, these traits were exhibited. Casual
and brief interviews with teachers and students showed they had been soul tremendous
consciousness as not all features in the WhatsApp data reflected in the essay data.
Description:
A dissertation in Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign
Languages Education and Communication, submitted to the School of Graduate
Studies, in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education
(Teaching English as a Second Language – TESL)
in the University of Education, Winneba
SEPTEMBER, 2019
