ELIZABETH OTABOR OSAMUDIAMEN.

This project examined the reception of audience to cliff-hanging narratives as perceived by Mass Communication students of Uniben. The study was investigated to explore the reasons behind audience reactions and to know their reception of cliff hanging narratives, how audience receive series production from Nollywood. This study was able to point out that Nollywood movie producers have failed to see the importance of cliff-hanging narrative in a plot as they rush into production without carefully drawing out a good cliff-hanger that will be able to keep their audience glued to the story, hence they produce movie series with weak cliff-hangers, unable to seize the audience’s attention. The survey design was adopted for the study with the aid of 9-item questionnaire administered to 155 respondents purposively selected from the four levels in the department of Mass Communication in the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State. Data obtained were analyzed and presented with the aid of Frequency Tables, Simple Percentage and Mean Scores. Therefore, the study concludes that audience do not show much interest in Nolywood movie series as a result of the poor implementation of cliff-hanging narratives, cliff-hangers play very important role in maintaining suspense in a plot in order to ensure the interest and focus of the audience, hence Nollywood producers must be very professional in the production process as they implement the cliff-hanging narrative.

The study investigated the Differential Effectiveness of Cognitive Restructuring Therapy (CRT), Social Skills Training (SST) and Assertiveness Training (AT) Counselling Techniques in Handling Shyness using Students in Public Junior Secondary Schools in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State. The study determined the general level of shyness as well as among male and female students in junior secondary schools in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State. The study also determined if sex influenced the efficacies of the three counselling therapies in the handling of shyness among students in junior secondary schools in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State. To address the problem of the study, nine research questions were raised and seven of them were formulated into seven corresponding hypotheses and tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The target population of the study consisted of thirty thousand, five hundred and seventy-four (30,574) students enrolled in the 2022/2023 academic session in the Public Mixed Junior Secondary Schools Two (JSS2) in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State. The sample size comprised of two hundred (200) junior secondary school students which were selected using a multi-stage sampling technique. Quasi experimental research design which involved non-equivalent pre-test-post-test design was adopted for the study which consisted of three experimental groups. The instrument used for pre-test and post-test was the questionnaire titled; Shyness Inventory (SI). The validity of the instrument was ascertained by three experts-the researcher’s two supervisors and one test expert in the Department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Benin, Benin-City. The instrument was administered on thirty students outside the sample of the study to determine the reliability of the instrument. Cronbach Alpha statistics was used to obtain a reliability coefficient of 0.85. The Shyness Inventory (SI) was used to identify the shy students