Spelling errors among junior high school students in the Cape Coast Metropolis

Abstract

In recent years, the standard of English has been criticised as being low. The Chief Examiner’s Report on the 2001 – 2010 Basic Education Certificate Examination (B.E.C.E.) singled out poor spelling as a major cause of the poor performance by candidates during examination. This paper therefore investigates spelling errors among Junior High School (JHS) students in some selected schools in the Cape Coast Metropolis in the Central Region of Ghana. It also finds out if the type of school (social classification) has any influence on the performance of students and, to establish the correlation between gender and performance in English Language (L2). The study employed both qualitative and quantitative approach. The data for the study were obtained using some test tools, questionnaire, and interviews. In all, 60 participants made up of 30 males and 30 females were used for the study. The result identified six error types – omission, addition, substitution, inversion, pronunciation and miscellaneous out of which omission errors were committed most. It also revealed that, even though students in both private and public schools have difficulties in learning the L2, students in the private school show some level of mastery in spelling ability than their counterparts in the public schools. The result also indicates that boys perform better than their female counterparts when it comes to spellings. These findings have some pedagogical implications for people who are interested in language studies