Posted by Sorosoro on December 4, 2010

By Finnish sociolinguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas who has specialized in multilingual education, among other research topics, and is involved in mother-tongue education projects in Nepal and India.

Last week Tove explained why it is essential to school children in their mother tongue first, in order to help them grow into « thinking and knowledgeable » persons. The exploration of this topic continues here on the question of the recommended duration of mother-tongue education, with field inputs from Nepal, Ethiopia and India.

Nepal – © Katia Buffetrille

All research studies in the world show that the longer the child has the mother tongue as the main medium of education, the better the child learns the subjects and the better s/he also becomes in the dominant language of the counrty and in additional languages.

In Nepal, the teachers in the multilingual education programmes know both the children’s mother tongue and Nepali. They all teach Nepali as a second language subject from grade 1 or 2.
Then, when the child is already high-level bilingual in the mother tongue and Nepali, she learns English and other languages faster and better than if she starts English learning as monolingual in the mother tongue. She needs fewer years and less exposure to English to learn it well.

So, what is the recommended duration of teaching in mother tongue ? 3 years of mother tongue teaching is much better than having all the teaching in Nepali (or in English, which is even worse), but 3 years is NOT enough. 6 years in the mother tongue is an absolute minimum, but 8 years is better.

Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has a decentralised education system where 8 years of mother-tongue-based multilingual education is recommanded. Some districts have chosen to have only 4 or 6 years of mother-tongue-medium. Comparing results from the whole country, a large study shows that those who have 8 years of mainly mother-tongue-medium and who have studied Amharic (the dominant Etiopian language) and English as subjects, have the best results in science, mathematics, etc., and also in English. Those with 6 years are not as good, and those who have switched to English-medium already after grade 4, have the worst results, also in English.

Many studies in India show that children in English-medium private schools initially know English better than children in mother tongue or regional language government schools. But at the end of grade 8, the knowledge in the various subjects of the students in English-medium schools is lower than in the government schools, and their English is no better. In addition, they do not know how to read or write their mother tongues and do not have the vocabulary to discuss what they have learned, in any Indian languages. They have sacrificed knowledge of Indian languages and much of the knowledge of school subjects but they only get a proficiency in the English language, that is not high-level. This is partly because the English language competence of teachers is generally not very high, but also because the children have not been able to develop a high-level cognitive-academic language proficiency, neither in the mother tongues nor in English.

The number of years in mother-tongue-medium education is also more important for the results than the parents’ socio-economic status. This means that multilingual education also supports economically poor children’s school achievements.

www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org