Today is International Literacy Day

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• Egalitarian 7 years ago

  Over 3 million children in Ghana do not go school and the powers tha be do not care. Most of those who do go school have poor quality education.
  
  Our priorities are expensive funerals and impoverishing and alcohol promoting ...
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  Over 3 million children in Ghana do not go school and the powers tha be do not care. Most of those who do go school have poor quality education.
  
  Our priorities are expensive funerals and impoverishing and alcohol promoting festivals and celebrations

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• G. K. Berko 7 years ago

  Today should be specially honored for personal assessment of our individual literary prowess. It must be a day on which we ought to evaluate how we communicate among ourselves formally. That means we must accept the challeng ...
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  Today should be specially honored for personal assessment of our individual literary prowess. It must be a day on which we ought to evaluate how we communicate among ourselves formally. That means we must accept the challenge of writing with better Grammar, less ambiguity, and in the appropriate context.
  
  We also must think more of improving our speaking skills to make points easier to understand and more poignant to the issue at stake.
  
  As we have unwittingly accepted the English Language as our lingua franca, we owe it to one another to use it at its purest, yet in its simplest form possible to convey our message.
  
  We have the luck of English being malleable and absorbent enough to capture new foreign vocabulary. It is a spectacular Language in that regard, always expanding with the introduction of other foreign lexicon. So, we would be able to insert into English popular vernacular words that may convey particular meanings that are not precisely reflected in currently established English lexicon.
  
  Even so, the acceptance of such new words may take time, and we ought to be caring enough to limit their usage when interacting with another who is not familiar with their meanings so that we do not make it more difficult for them to understand us.
  
  More, the garnishment of messages conveyed with the Language would have to be better matched with the essence of the message conveyed in order not to lose the listener. We have often witnessed the likes of Dr. Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. and Francis Kwarteng weaving intricate but delicate bouquet of uncommon lexicon into their narratives. Many of us have expressed our disgust for such style of writing in the English Language because of the difficulty in understanding the unusual words used. But we must admit that it makes reading all the more intriguing; such styles arouses our curiosity quotient, most of the time.
  
  I, for one, would rather like to see such styles of flamboyant expression of the English Language used to entertain and excite us to read more than to be repelled from reading at all. From that angle, I would like to make special mention of Dr. SAS and Dr. Daniel Pryce for their exemplary writing styles that most of us love to read, even as we disagree with their messages.
  
  But all said, we must begin to set ourselves individual capacity-growth benchmarks for learning better English, and using the Language to serve us all the best. Our Educational Institutions and Businesses must all do more to help us all achieve these goals. The better we communicate among ourselves, the more we can understand one another, and the less we could avoid needless arguments. Sometimes, we may not be far from each other's views. But it is just that we fail to convey our points across most effectively.
  
  Having said so much about our Lingua Franca, I would also like emphasize the need to speak and write our Vernacular Languages right and more often. There is nothing more frustrating than being unable to express in your own native Language crucial points that you want to convey in an important message to another who speaks it.
  
  We must not consider improved literacy as only essential in our usage of our Lingua Franca, English. We must just as well do well to speak and use our Local Languages among ourselves on appropriate occasions.
  
  Lastly, we must include learning other new Languages, especially, our Local Languages, in the suggested improved literacy drive that we would like today to set us off on. We can all target one Language to begin learning from today.
  
  Long Live Ghana!!!

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