The investigation of conjunctive writing adoption and other changes in Sesotho orthography in the three selected high schools at Thaba-Tseka District in Lesotho.

Abstract

This study investigates how conjunctive writing and other changes have been adopted by students. Students conjunct, omit, substitute and disconjunct substantives, qualificatives, verbs, adverbs and conjunctions. These changes violate the rules of Sesotho orthography in Lesotho. Viewed from the morphological theory, some parts of speech lose their meaning because of conjunctive and disjunctive writing, which in some cases become very difficult to locate in a sentence. This study adopts or uses morphological theory, semantic theory and minimalist program to analyse or to build an argument on the data collected. It also uses a qualitative approach in order to attain holistic results. Data is collected from students’ documents (examination scripts) which later is analysed. Document analysis is appropriate in this study because it allows the researcher to pick up how the students adopt the new style of writing Sesotho. The findings of the study could benefit teachers, students and NCDC. The study recommends that there should be regular workshops for teachers to equip them with technigues on how to teach Sesotho. It also recommends that ECOL revisits the assessment for grade 11, especially the marks awarded for sebopeho-puo ‘grammar’.