INTERPRETATION OF TEXTS: A SEMANTICO-SYNTACTIC STUDY OF WRITINGS FROM SELECTED SOURCES

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Date
1997-03
Authors
ADEJOH, JOSEPHINE ELEOJO
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Abstract
ABSTRACT This is a study on Interpretation of texts - A semantico - syntactic study of writings from selected sources. It is based on the difficulties people face in an attempt to correctly interpret texts. Our respondents who were the SSII students of school mentioned in the work, face many difficulties when interpreting texts, and as a result, wrong interpretations were given. The tests administered to test the interpretative ability were taken from the novel:-"No Second Chance" (by Olumense, S) and a text book titled:- "Handbook of special Education: Teaching the Visually Handicapped" (by Abang, Theresa) . The texts were chosen because they were believed to be of the appropriate difficulty level for the respondents at their own level. The objective of this study was to discover the difficulties faced by people in interpreting texts, look into the causes and make suggestions on how these difficulties can be overcome. Chapter one formed the introduction of the study. It discussed the statement of the problem, aims and objectives of the study and the scope of the study. It also looked at some terms - reading, writing, interpretation (briefly) and the overt relationship between syntax and semantics. viii Chapter two reviewed some related literature. It reappraised a text - what formed the constituents, the field, tenor and mode of discourse, registers, cohesion and the linguistic system, theories of reading, writing and interpretation, representational holism and then a summary on spoken and written language. Chapter three was the theoretical framework. Two approaches used in this work were Davy and Crystal's approach and Haynes's approach to stylistic analysis. It also treated the classification of features like individuality, dialect, time, province, etc. The chapter discussed the methodology and the total number of respondents. In chapter four, the findings and performances on the different sub-tests have been represented in tables followed by discussions. The tests were marked based on the following criteria - cognitive, interpretative, evaluative and affective abilities. The last part of this chapter formed the concluding observations on the overall performance. ix Chapter five summed up all that had been discussed in the previous chapters. It has reflected on the implications of the findings for teachers, students and text writers. Recommendations/suggestions have been made, these with the overall intention of advancing points that could help uplift both students' interpretative skills and an improvement in the methods used for testing interpretation.
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A Thesis submitted to the post-graduate school, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Award of the Degree of Master of Arts in English language, in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
Keywords
INTERPRETATION OF TEXTS:, SEMANTICO-SYNTACTIC STUDY, WRITINGS, SELECTED SOURCES
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