Page 78 - Languages Victoria December 2019

Languages Victoria
Should African schools teach more local languages? Credit: DW Made for Minds
Date of publication: 11 September, 2018
This has been re-published with permission from the DW Made for Minds.
Author: Tabea Goppelt Link to the online article:
https://www.dw.com/en/should-african-schools-teach-more-local-languages/a-45446876
Imagine starting school and not being able to understand your teacher. That's a reality for many African first-graders who speak their mother tongues at home and are taught in English, French or Portuguese at school.
Africa south of the Sahara is home to around 2,000 different languages. They're spoken at home, on the street and perhaps on the local radio and TV stations, but very few have made it into the classroom.
The languages taught and spoken at school are relics of the colonial era and many children, especially those in rural settings, enter the all-English, French or Portuguese language schools with little prior knowledge.
It's counterproductive, say educational experts. "If you want to find a measure to prevent children from learning, you have already found that by teaching in a language that they don't hear around them," says Birgit Brock- Utne, a Norwegian education expert. She is currently based at Witwatersrand University in South Africa as a visiting professor. "Our research shows very clearly that it is better to start with the mother tongue or another language the children are familiar with.”
Raising more lively and critical thinkers
In some African countries, this change is already happening in the classroom. Primary schools integrate local languages into the lessons and some are even teaching exclusively in the local language.
According to UNESCO's "Global Education Monitoring Report 2016," teaching in the mother tongue is vital, especially at a primary school level. It recommends that children should be taught in their mother tongue for at least six years, to avoid knowledge gaps and increase the speed at which children learn and understand the taught material.
Page 78 Volume 23 Number 2