The Conundrum of Mother Tongue Instruction

IN RECENT pieces, the importance of mother tongue instruction was dealt with in a simplistic way. This especially comes from proponents of English as a medium of instruction.

In their view the more English is taught, the better. It would be impossible to exhaust all relevant factors, but it is necessary to ventilate some thoughts and experiences around this issue.

In some regions mother tongue was used as a medium of instruction, the last pre-independence introduction of English as a medium of instruction was in 1980 under the second tier administration in the northern regions. In retrospect, would we say that four decades later, English has become the major means of communication in those regions? The means of communication remains the local indigenous languages.

Why is mother tongue instruction then important? As a product of mother tongue instruction in my formative years of schooling, I proudly can say that I have good English language usage. I had to study through and took Afrikaans as first or home language in school from Standard 3 (now Grade 5), as my mother tongue Khoekhoegowab was not offered beyond that in the previous dispensation.

Mother tongue instruction did not inhibit my acquisition of other languages such as Afrikaans and English.

The only means of communication that the majority of children have when entering school for the first time is their mother tongue. Given pupil-centred education, what knowledge is then imparted to the child and in which mutually understood means of communication?

Concept formation cannot take place in the absence of a medium to think in. The child does not have the ability to comprehend what is being taught, because of the total absence of understanding the language of communication in the classroom. It becomes a serious drawback as the pupil progresses through school.

The problem is not the mother tongue, but the type or level to which English is used as a medium of instruction and the accumulated backlog which the children had because of scholastic ‘linguistic’ deprivation.

There is considerable evidence that learning through a language which is not the first language of the child requires adaptation of educational methods that may be successfully done when a child learns through his/her first language (first language medium education).

Many pupils learn through a language in which they are neither competent nor feel comfortable. This kind of learning is called subtractive bilingualism, and can arise from a situation where neither teachers nor pupils feel proficient and comfortable in the language used as medium of instruction. This naturally can have a negative influence on the quality of the teaching and learning process.

The issue of emersion mentioned in a recent opinion piece that all children should start from day one with English as a medium instruction does not hold water. Emersion can succeed in the presence of an enabling environment, in this case an English speaking community, although our children are exposed to English only for a limited number of hours per week in the school.

In my humble opinion, raised at various forums in Namibia, the level of English offered through our curriculum needs improvement from rudimentary language teaching closer to home language level. This will have to impact on the level of teacher training and classroom teaching delivery.

The quality of language teaching should be improved in all languages as the lack of efficient language teaching is finally reflected in our secondary school results.

Tsâtago L S Davids

Via email

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