Situating language at the centre of journalism training: The case for broadening the spheres of English teaching and learning in Journalism training institutions in Ghana

Abstract

This paper derives its impetus from the consensus today that the media play an indispensable role indemocratic governance for sustained development. The media foster, most importantly, accountability,transparency, rule of law, respect for human rights, and civic participation, which are vital in securing theeconomic well-being of a people. Language, as the main vehicle that drives communication or journalisticimperatives to the “consumer”, thus becomes a critical factor.The focus here is on the effective and appropriate use of English (Ghana’s official language) innewspapers in Ghana. It is argued that the majority of newspapers display linguistic ineptitude, therebyweakening their capacity to package and make development-oriented messages accessible to the reader.Specifically, the majority of newspapers present news in grammatically faulty and semantically confusingconstructions that blur meaning. Thus, through a comparative study of the English and English-relatedcourses in four journalism training institutions in Ghana and the English provisions in the latest UNESCOjournalism curricula for Africa (2007), the study shows that English competence appears to be taken forgranted in the training institutions.This paper therefore argues for journalism education in Ghana to focus on helping trainee journalists toacquire English language competency. A more worthwhile complement will be to de-emphasise the“core” journalism or media knowledge and skills students are made to focus all their attention on in theschools and rather emphasise English use and usage. The paper suggests a reorganisation of Englishstudies including institutional structure, curriculum and syllabus development, infrastructure, teaching,and learning methodology as ways of broadening English language pedagogy to produce the calibre ofjournalists who can really champion the democratic and developmental aspirations of Ghana and Africa.