A Sociolinguistic Study of Slang’s Ramifications on Secondary School Pupils in Chongwe District, Lusaka-Zambia

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of slang and the influence it had on academic writing especially composition among pupils in selected schools in Chongwe district, Lusaka Province. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the reasons that make learners use slang, why they do so and the effects it had on academic writing. The study is important because it brings to view the effects of slang and calls on use of proper words sound and intonation in order to help learners curtail misspelling of words in formal writing work. Furthermore, since some teachers of language were involved in the study, the findings and recommendations presented in this study may be put to good use by teachers of English and all readers of this work in order to curtail slang use in formal writing work The study is of qualitative by nature as it used descriptive survey method to collect data. The sample size for this study was drawn from the following secondary schools: Chongwe, Kasisi, Mukamambo, Ndeke and Silverest. A total of 100 participants were used comprising 80 pupils in Grade 11 and 12 and 20 teachers. 16 pupils were selected from each of the five schools and 4 teachers. Gender was taken into consideration when coming up with the sample size. The report mentioned the following as the challenges which learners faced in composition final examinations: Difficulties in the use of tenses, failure to construct correct sentences, direct translation from mother tongue, wrong spellings, inability to amplify given points, poor punctuation, poor paragraphing, use of colloquial words and slang, use of short message (SMS) language, ambiguity, lack of cohesion in compositions In view of the observations made in the study, the following recommendations are made so as to achieve communicative competence in spoken and written English language free from slang: Revising the curriculum and syllabus for Junior and Senior secondary English so that it contains more methods and guidelines on how to deal with the problem of slang. Schools to introduce a policy that would bar pupil from using slang in the classroom or within school premises. School based CPDs should be enhanced so as to give teachers an opportunity to brainstorm the challenges that come with slang. Language Department in schools to liaise with other departments so that all teachers to insist on learners’ using formal English in all their academic writing.