Abstract:
ABSTRACT
This thesis explored the differences in writings produced by both male and
female students in colleges of education in Ghana with respect to syntactic
complexity. The study sought to find out which gender is syntactically
complex in writing of argumentative essay. Again, the study looked at the
effect of syntactic complexity on the quality of students’ writing of
argumentative essay. The study was based on a corpus of two hundred
examination essays belonging to the argumentation mode collected from two
hundred students in Assin Fosu, Wesley and Presbyterian Colleges of
Education who took the English Language Studies course (FDC 211) in
2018/2019 academic year. The study lent credit to the Difference version of
gender and language theory as it upheld the existence of variation in the
writing of males and females with regard to writing syntactically complex
sentences. The analysis showed that the male students were more syntactically
complex than the female students in their writings. The study established clear
variations in the areas of length of production unit, sentence complexity,
amount of subordination and coordination and particular structures. The study
also showed that there was a positive but weak relationship between syntactic
complexity and writing quality. That is, the greater the density of length of
production unit, sentence complexity, amount of subordination and particular
structures, the higher the quality of the students’ writing. The present study
focused on written language. Subsequent studies could examine gender
variation with regard to syntactic complexity in spoken language.
