English Pronouns in the Writing of Some Batswana Students

Abstract

This paper examines the morphological and syntactic differences between English and Setswana pronouns, and how these differences manifest in students' usage of English
pronouns at the University of Botswana. It also discusses some of the ways by which the
learners may be assisted to become more proficient in using English pronouns. An analysis
of 542 essays written by second and fourth year students of the Department of English
reveal the following categories of pronoun errors: the intrusion of an independent subject
pronoun between a subject and its verb, the conflation of the standard expression the
one…the other into the other…the other, inter substitution of they/there/their, lack of
gender and case distinctions, use of pronouns without antecedents and pronoun referent
agreement errors. In terms of the sources of these errors, the paper shows that the first six
types of errors seem to relate directly or indirectly to the morphological and syntactic
structures of Setswana pronouns while the last type is largely intralingual. The paper
recommends that policy planners should recognise the existence of Botswana English and
its influence on learners' acquisition of English, and appropriately reflect this in language
teaching policy, tests and exams in the country. It also suggests that teachers should raise
their awareness of Botswana English in order to be able to distinguish between learners'
usage that are unpredictable and those that have become systematic localisms, and delegate more learning responsibility to the learners themselves.

Keywords: second language learning, English pronouns, Setswana pronouns

MARANG Vol. 18 2008 pp. 85-101