This course discusses the development of dramatic theory from the period of the Ancient Greeks to the present. It aims to acquaint students with the changing theoretical bases of the genre from Greek tragedy to later dramatic forms like the theatre of the absurd, the various types of comedy, and modern tragedy. Representative texts will be used for illustration.
In a sweeping movement from the Greek classification to contemporary African literature, this course explores the theoretical, philosophical, historical and ideological foundations of literary criticism and practice. It considers such received principles as the immanent history of literature, the nature of art, concepts of beauty in art, and the creative process in literature. The course guides students to reflect on the practice of art and criticism by considering a selection of canonical texts from Aristotle and Achebe to Tolstoy and Woolf.
The course attempts to introduce students to the scientific study of recurrent errors made by second language learners of English. Special emphasis will be given to the nature of the similarities and differences between English and L1 systems. The pedagogical significance of error and contrastive analysis will be examined in detail.
The course seeks to highlight the major landmarks in the history of the English language that have made English the most outstanding international language. The course therefore engages a chronology of the evolution of English Language by examining the following periods: the Germanic Period, the Old or Anglo-Saxon Period, Middle English, and the Period of Modern English; the notion of Lingua Franca is also studied, and the course finally shows that today’s English is related to the phenomenon of Language Mixing because although Germanic by origin ( vocabulary and Grammar), todays’ English is comprises words borrowed from hundreds of other languages.
This course is intended to help students to distinguish varieties of English by analyzing the linguistic patterning of texts. It is also expected to improve students’ own writing in different situations. Hence, the course will be very practical with exercises on analyzing and writing business letters, reports, minutes, and speeches. It encourages students to distinguish varieties of English, which are dialects. Other distinctions depending on mode, tenor and domain will be studied. The emphasis will be on analyzing and producing texts of different varieties, which perform different functions, such as expressive, formal, informal, spoken and written.
This course looks at a few of the important colonial writers – Williams Bradstreed, Wheatly - and follows the growth of American literature from independence in 1776 through the writing produced in the turbulence of the Civil Rights era. Attention is given to well-known American writers such as Dickinson, Whitman, Melville, Twain, and Ellison. Other authors include Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and Richard Wright. The course also looks at the American vernacular, the effects of slavery, and the role of the individual on the formation of American literature
This is a course that seeks to determine some of the concerns of a selection of representative African women writers. It will examine literary writers from West, Southern, and North Africa, with the intention of determining the forms by which these writers deploy the issues of major focus. The two central subjects that will engage our attention will include class and gender, with an emphasis on the power relations that underpin them. We hope to establish the literary ways by which these subjects are fictionalized in the writing of the selected writers.
This course introduces students to a selection of the works of Shakespeare with emphasis on Shakespeare’s dramatic technique, themes, characterization and language as well as his contribution to poetry. The course guides Ghanaian students to read Shakespeare’s works with an appreciation of the historical, cultural and linguistic differences represented in the texts to be studied. Preference is, therefore, given to texts that, in addition to explaining universal themes, have something to say about the African condition.
This course builds on the clause as an organic part of the sentence, sentence types and the use of sentences in text are highlighted with the view to developing the writing and oral skills of the students in the domains in which they need English in their studies and after graduation.
The course looks at the different forms and functions of English in communities that have other languages genetically unrelated to English as first language. Topics to be treated include the growth of English as a world language, the emergence of new English as a world language, the emergence of new Englishes, perceptions of non-native varieties of English, the relationship between English and indigenous languages, and samples of Ghanaian English.
