An Analysis of the Communicative Skills of Undergraduate Students of the University of Cape Coast from a Linguistic Perspective, Ghana

in Ghana, the Communicative Skills (CS) course constitutes a multifaceted set of skills which are required for first year undergraduate students to function effectively in their various discipline-specific areas and to pursue their academic work with minimum difficulty. The CS course is designed to help students in the pursuit of their academic goals throughout their undergraduate period in the university (Johns & Swales, 2002). At the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, CS is a university-wide course. It is designed to serve the different needs of the diverse groups of fresh students to equip them with requisite skills to undertake various academic tasks and to participate in university activities. When fresh students are admitted into the University of Cape Coast, they are required to take the CS course for two semesters. For the first semester, students are equipped with reading skills, listening and speaking skills, study skills, language skills, referencing and plagiarism. The second semester CS course at the University of Cape Coast, which is a Abstract: Research has showed that pre-university institutions have a culture and practices which are different from tertiary institutions. Engaging in academic pursuits at the university level goes with challenges. The Communicative Skills (CS) course, a form of Academic Literacy (AL) or English for Academic Purpose (EAP) program at the university level, exposes fresh students to techniques, methods, approaches and some orientation they will require to pursue their undergraduate studies with minimum difficulty. The CS course equips students with skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It also emphasizes effective ways of gathering, organizing, recording and retrieving information. In view of the fact that English is the medium of communication in universities in Ghana, various aspects of its structure that may facilitate effective communication are highlighted in the CS course. The CS course equips students with skills that will help them pay attention to grammaticality and conventions of usage in English. In this paper, I focused on the linguistic aspect of the communicative skills of undergraduate students of the University of Cape Coast (UCC). I analyzed errors of grammar and other conventions of usage in the English of the students. The current study was underpinned by the Error Analysis (EA) theory due to its linguistic nature. The analysis of the errors of students revealed that they committed errors of grammar, syntax, morphology and collocation and these affected the communicative functions of the English they used. students with study, writing and language skills. The CS course also concerns itself with the language deficiencies of students. The current paper focused on the communicative skills of fresh undergraduate students from a linguistic perspective by analyzing the errors they commit in their English. The study revealed errors of grammar, syntax, morphology and collocation. These errors are indications of incomplete learning and inadequate language knowledge which may enable students to avoid linguistic misuse. The errors also depict false application of certain target language rules. Although errors in English affect communication adversely, they provide researchers and instructors with evidence of how a foreign language like English is learned or acquired and also serve as devices the learners employ in order to learn.