A STYLISTIC READING OF SELECTED PAST WEST AFRICAN SENIOR SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION COMPREHENSION PASSAGES (2011-2020)

Abstract

The study considered a stylistic reading of selected past West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) comprehension passages to unravel the linguistic peculiarity of the texts to guide students preparing for such examinations. Ten comprehension passages from 2011 to 2020 were sampled using both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. The two approaches became relevant for finding the statistics of the occurrence of linguistic variables and for textual explication. The study relied on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistic theoretical framework. The findings showed that four linguistic elements were pervading and hold significant implications for candidates studying WASSCE: sentence types, grammatical names, figurative expressions, and replacing words/phrases with alternative words/phrases as used within context. Regarding sentence types, WASSCE passages deliberately featured simpler sentences (51.8%) to make the passages accessible to the students. However, other types of sentences were sparingly but randomly engaged to provide room for varying sentence types in comprehension passages. It was also found that questions on grammatical names featured a preponderance of clauses (80%) than phrases (20%). The adverbial clause tops the list of most featured grammatical names by 60% to underscore the utility purposes of the grammatical item in structures. In addition, metaphors and similes were the most persistent literary devices, with the former accounting for 60%. Lastly, on substituting words for other words within a context, adjectives were the most frequently featured (37 %). The study concluded that the pedagogical significance of stylistics in understanding examination texts cannot be overemphasised. Therefore, it is suggested that stylistics be incorporated into reading comprehension instruction to enhance learners’ interpretive and analytical skills.