School of Science and Applied Technology
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Item Gendered Language in Nursery Classroom Discourse in Selected Schools in Nyahururu Town, Kenya(Laikipia University, 2016-09) Beru, Wahome PeterNursery school education in Kenya is the provision of learning to children before the commencement of statutory and obligatory education, usually between the ages of three and five years. This education is highly interactive and social. Through this interaction, gender differences and roles among learners may occur, creating the need of a gender sensitive approach to the teaching of these learners. Strategies to be employed in the discourse of teaching nursery school learners, in order to sustain a common gender sensitive pedagogy for the creation of gender equality, have not been clearly established. For this reason, this study aimed at identifying and describing the gendered language brought out in nursery classroom discourses, analyzing the discourses of gender used in classroom pedagogy and establishing the effect of the gender related messages on the learners in nursery classroom discourse. Arguments in this paper were guided by Critical Discourse Analysis Theory by Norman Fairclough, which connects language to society through three pillars: ideology, struggle for power and criticality. It was supplemented by Initial Response Feedback (IRF) model of classroom discourse by Sinclair and Coulthard, and the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson. The study took a descriptive research design which examined the use of control acts by learners of nursery school age. The study was based on the observation of learners’ activities in nursery school environment that lasted one academic term. Further, this study sought to improve the teachers’ and learners’ image and values concerning traditional feminine and masculine activities and choice. This helps the children cross traditional gender stereotypes on gender roles. The findings revealed that indeed, influences of gendered texts and gendered roles socialisation are real in the classroom discourse, which has greatly impacted on learners’ gender roles identity. The study also established that gender bias is present in our ECD learning institutions, and indeed, child care professionals encounter many barriers to promoting genuine equity for children. By valuing and actively working towards gender equity, the barriers of gender stereotypes and prejudice can be broken down to enable boys and girls to benefit equally from their child care experiences. This research will benefit linguistic research as it encompasses several disciplines, which include linguistic anthropology, conversational analysis, cultural studies, feminist psychology, social linguistics and feminist media studies.Item Gendered Language in Nursery Classroom Discourse in Selected Schools in Nyahururu Town, Kenya(Laikipia University, 2016-09) Beru, Wahome PeterItem An Analysis of Morphophonological Processes of Loan Words From English to Gikuyu(Laikipia University, 2015-11) Ndung’u, Anne WanjiruWhen contact occurs between two or more languages, there is bound to be some sort of language influence which can affect either of the languages concerned. In Kenya, English has had extensive contact with the Kenyan speaking communities for nearly a century. Due to this contact there has been a considerable influence of English on Kenyan ethnic languages. Lexical borrowing between English and Gikuyu is quite prevalent. Usually, English is the donor language while Gikuyu is the recipient. This study was motivated by the fact that morphophonological processes that English words borrowed by Gikuyu undergo in order to fit into the latter’s system has not been accorded much scholarly attention. The study is an analysis of morphophonological processes English loan words undergo to fit into Gikuyu sound system. The study set out to investigate the morphophonological processes that Gikuyu loan words from English undergo to fit in the Gikuyu system. In particular the Processes that Gikuyu nouns borrowed from English undergo to be accepted in Gikuyu sound structure were analyzed. The study was guided by the theory of Natural Generative Phonology by J.B.Hooper. A descriptive research design was used for the study. Judgmental sampling procedure obtained data from a random sample of fifty respondents drawn from selected professions in Kiharu Division of Murang’a County. The data incorporated an assortment of words from the following fields of interest: Health, Transport, Education, Business/Trade, Religion, Police Service, Government and Law, Domesticity, Auto-motive mechanics and Building and Construction. Two research instruments namely interview schedule and audio recording were used to generate the data. Results indicate that Gikuyu replaces English segments with Gikuyu sounds at initial, medial or final word position. The study further noted that Gikuyu employs several processes to nativize the loan words borrowed from English. These processes were consonant deletion, consonant substitution/alteration, stop sound prenasalization, vowel insertion, epenthesis, vowel lengthening, vowel monophthongization, fore clipping, apocope, adoption of clipped words, calque and lexicalization of acronyms and letter words. The findings of this study will be useful to researchers in applied linguistics and educationists in the area of language pedagogy.Item An Analysis of The Influence of First Language (L1) Transfer on Spoken English on Secondary Schools in Mogotio Sub-County, Baringo County, Kenya(Laikipia University, 2015-11) Marotse, S Violet.There is a notable decline in the performance of spoken English in secondary schools in Mogotio Sub County. The causes of this decline are not known. It is speculated that first language (L1) among other factors is responsible for this decline. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of L1 on spoken English language in selected secondary schools in Mogotio Sub County, Kenya. The objectives of the study were to identify the nature of errors in spoken English, categorize LI transfer errors and establish whether performance in spoken English influences students’ communicative competence in written English among sampled students in secondary schools in Mogotio Sub County. The study was guided by error analysis, inter-language, contrastive analysis and Eckman’s markedness differential Hypothesis. The study used both qualitative and quantitative approach. The study was based on a descriptive survey design. Data were collected by means of a guided written composition and a reading proficiency test. The reading sessions were recorded and transcribed for purposes of analysis. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study population comprised Form Two students. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample of the study. A study sample of 279 form two students from four secondary schools was involved in the study. The study found out that the errors made in this study were classified as phoneme deletion, phoneme oddity, syllable deletion, phoneme identification, phoneme segmentation, phoneme substitution, phoneme addition, inter-lingual errors and intralingual errors. More errors in language use occurred in the context of use of the homophones pail and pale. It was also observed that the position of the sound in a word influenced the nature of errors made by the L2 language users. The frequency of errors in pronouncing the sound /p/ was highest when the sound appeared word initially but relatively fewer errors were reported in both word medially and word finally. The study also concludes that performance in spoken English influenced students’ communicative competence in written English among the students in Mogotio Sub County. The study recommends that teachers should view students’ errors positively and not as the learners’ failure to grasp the rules and structures of English. The results of this study may be useful to ESL teachers in secondary schools in Kenya.Collection