Misspellings on Signage: Are Learners of English Language Safe?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to carry out an experiment to determine whether or not misspellings (in the English language) on signage (the Linguistic Landscape) has a potential effect on the spelling competence of Senior High School learners of the English Language in the New Juaben Municipality in the Eastern Region of Ghana. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted for the study. Fifty (50) learners out of a population of eighty-nine (89) learners from two Senior High Schools in the New Juaben Municipality were purposively selected for the study. The researcher selected some words which had been misspelt on selected signage in the Municipality and gave the learners spelling dictation on those words. The researcher then displayed the pictures of the selected signage with misspellings on them in the classrooms of the selected schools for a month. At the end of the period the researcher went back to the schools to take a second spelling dictation of the same words that were used in the first dictation. After this exercise, students’ attention were drawn to those words which had been misspelt on the signage and they were taught the correct spellings of those words. The results of the data collected from students’ (that is results on the dictation and questionnaire) were analysed in both percentage and pie chart forms. The analysis of the results revealed that majority of learners read inscriptions on signage but the spelling competence of a minority of them were affected by spellings on signage however the minority’s (and by extension most learners’) spelling competence could be improved if their linguistic landscape was used as one of the tools in teaching spelling in class. The study recommended that educators prompt students to be conscious of their linguistic landscape, with the former guiding the latter in critiquing and appreciating signage in their linguistic landscape. It was also recommended that Metropolitan authorities in the various Regions in Ghana could institute measures that will censor signage before they are put up in the public space.