The Use of Transitional Devices in the Writing of ESL Learners: A Case of Bolgatanga Girls’ SHS Students’ Essays

Abstract

This paper investigated the use of transitional devices by students of Bolgatanga Girls Senior High School. The objective set for the research was to identify the kind of transitional devices that appear in the writing of senior high school students. To achieve this objective, the researcher employed a case study approach. The researcher used interviews and observation of students’ scripts for the collection of the data for the research. Essays of students were sampled for the extraction of the transitional devices used by the students. The data that was obtained was analysed based on the themes that emerged from the research question. The findings of the study showed that Bolgatanga Girls’ Senior High School students used transitional devices of different categories in their writing tasks. The findings of the study revealed that the students contextually and semantically used connective devices appropriately, which make their essays to achieve coherence and cohesion. It was shown by the study that even though the students used the connective devices appropriately, they overused some of the transitional devices, while they avoided some. The study also showed that compound connective devices were sometimes misspelled by the students by writing them as separate words. The findings indicated that teachers of English language placed too much emphasis on the external examination; they also employed teacher-centred methods in teaching; they do not adopt process approach to teaching transitional devices to the students and the students also failed to undertake reading task on their own. The study recommended that teachers of English should teach transitional devices as a distinct topic and adopt a learner-centred approach to teaching transitional devices to their students.