Analysing The Use of Subjunctive Mood Among University Students in Ghana

Analysing The Use of Subjunctive Mood Among University Students in Ghana

Michael Owusu Tabiri, Ivy Jones-Mensah

This is a qualitative study that analysed the problem of subjunctive mood in English among Level 400 students in two Ghanaian universities. The data used for the analysis comprised students’ written exercises. This study adopted the contrastive analysis to analyse common errors or learners’ difficulties in using subjunctive mood in English (L2). From this, a total of 1020 wrong use of subjunctive mood were identified. Four categories of wrong use of subjunctive mood expressing; a desire or a wish (weresubjunctive), wrong use of subjunctive mood expressing a requirement or necessity, wrong use of subjunctive mood expressing suggestions and wrong use of subjunctive mood expressing hypothetical situations were identified. The results show that the subjunctive mood expressing suggestions recorded the highest form of error with 360 out of 1020 representing 35% out of the total number followed by the subjunctive expressing a requirement or necessity which recorded 300 errors representing 29% while wrong use of subjunctive mood expressing a desire or a wish (were-subjunctive) and subjunctive mood expressing hypothetical situations recorded 180 errors for each of them depicting 18% respectively. The work seeks to uncover the difficulties students of English usually encounter in the use of subjunctive mood. The study revealed that students face difficulties of identifying and writing all the types of the subjunctive mood such as formulaic subjunctive, mandative subjunctive, were-subjunctive and words that express hypothetical situations or improbable condition (type 2) in English (L2). Based on the findings of the study, three main causes …

2020

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=c6aHdPkAAAAJ&citation_for_view=c6aHdPkAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

English