Communication Challenges Between Teachers and Learners Based on Linguistic Resolution Features. A Case Study of Bahati Sub County, Nakuru.
Abstract
Communication is the passing of information between interlocutors and receiving of
feedback from contexts such as the one under study in secondary schools in Bahati subcounty.
Interlocutors are participants in a discussion or a conversation; in this study these
were teachers and students. Feedback in this context refers to response, rejoinder or retort that
the decoder of the message gives in the course of communication. This study aimed to
identify the communication challenges between form one learners and teachers in a school set
up in Bahati Sub-County. The study identified politeness markers used in student-teacher oral
communication based on the three categories of politeness markers; modal markers, lexical
content of politeness and sentence typology reflecting politeness. Instances when different
politeness markers were used in oral communication in school and the main illocutionary act
commonly used by the study population were also identified. The study methodology
involved learners and teachers filling a questionnaire that included both open and close ended
questions. Quantitative data was compiled in an excel spread sheet® for analysis. Qualitative
data was analysed and interpreted appropriately. This study reports that, please was the most
used lexical politeness marker, kindly and excuse me were also extensively used. The
participants used the imposing modals more than any other kind. Based on Leech‟s politeness
maxims and scales the study found that most interlocutors were less polite. The illocutionary
act commonly used by the study participants is the directive, which imposes on the hearer and
thus considered impolite, this leads to hitches in communication thus affecting the quality of
conversation between the learner and the teacher making it hard to achieve communication
goals. The participants were more polite when addressing their seniors and when seeking
assistance but less polite when addressing colleagues or when the information was not
beneficial to them.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
- Faculty of Arts [625]
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