Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

This paper examines the patterns of language use among immigrant children from Anglophone African countries living in Botswana. The study reveals major differences in their patterns of language use when compared to that of their parents. Three distinct language use patterns were identified; namely, children who are monolingual in English; those who are bilingual in English and the mother tongue, English and Kiswahili, or English and Setswana; and a third group who are multilingual in the mother tongue, English, Kiswahili and/ or Setswana. The study also reveals that whereas majority of the immigrant parents do not speak Setswana, in spite of their length of residence in Botswana, a good percentage of their children speaks Setswana. Another interesting finding is that many of the immigrant children who cannot speak their mother tongues are fluent speakers of Setswana, the dominant language of the host community. Data for this study were collected using two instruments; namely, a questionnaire designed for parents and an interview schedule for children aged between 18- 25. The questionnaire was administered to 100 immigrant parents from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. Fifty immigrant children from these countries were interviewed to get more insightful data on the patterns of language use among this population. Convenience sampling was used to identify the participants. The theoretical framework of this study was based on the “opportunity versus motivation” argument on language maintenance and language shift. The researcher recommends that immigrant children should be given more exposure and opportunities to learn and speak their mother tongue languages, especially in the family domain.

Many school children in ethnically diverse countries live in multilingual environments where the medium of instruction in school differs from their mother tongue. We conduct a field experiment in a multiethnic village in northern India to study the relative importance of linguistic distance and neighborhood isolation in the acquisition of language and mathematics skills in elementary school. The village has two sizable ethnic groups speaking languages very different from the medium of school instruction. Students attempt a set of mazes and take tests in reading and mathematics. We find that performance in language‐dependent tasks relative to mazes is lower for children whose mother tongue is different from the medium of instruction only if their ethnic group is also residentially segregated. Language policy in most countries has traditionally favored either mother‐tongue instruction or assimilation into mainstream language and culture. Our results suggest that there may be value in a more nuanced approach that flexibly combines some instructional support in a mother tongue for those who need it, with policies that encourage contact with speakers of dominant languages to benefit from peers and social networks.

The inalienable right to one’s mother tongue has long been acknowledged universally. This was first captured by the UN’s ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ as early as 1948 and recently reinforced through the ‘Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’ in 2006. The constitution of Kenya 2010, in The Bill of Rights (BR), reiterates this position by stating that the rights and fundamental freedoms belong to each individual and are not granted by the state. Mother tongue is one of the Human Rights. In essence, the constitution is expected to provide a basis upon which mother tongue can play a central role in the legal and judicial system of the country. However, mother tongue language remains on the periphery as the language of the law not to mention its subordinate role both as a legal language and the language of the administration of justice. This paper examines the current low status assumed by mother tongue in the Kenyan context within the Forensic Linguistics perspective. It is argued that there is an attempt at forced assimilation of mother tongue language to the dominant English language in our justice system. This process is at the heart of human rights violations as envisaged in the constitutional provisions on equality and freedom against discrimination as per article 27(4) of the Bill of Rights. The right to use of one’s mother tongue in the legal process is a fundamental pillar of equality and freedom against discrimination. It ensures that every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. The state players, therefore, have an obligation to protect the mother language through enforceable legislation as contemplated by the constitution of Kenya Article 7(3). The same constitution must be re-examined and amended to put mother tongue at the core of judicial administration and legal practice in the country. Keywords: Mother tongue, injustice, legal, constitution, forensic linguistics. DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/118-13 Publication date: February 28 th 2022

The paper investigated the local implementation of the National Policy of Education (NPE) on the use of mother tongues or the languages of the immediate community. Using a case study approach of Yoruba medium of instruction in Ikire in the south-western part of Nigeria, data were collected from 50 teachers from both private and public schools. These respondents were selected on being able to satisfy the following conditions: first, they should be able to communicate in Yoruba; second, they should have adequate teaching experience; third, they should have good academic qualifications; and fourth, they should have been teaching, for more than a year, Elementary Science (the particular classroom subject the study examined being taught to the pupils). These conditions ensured the teachers engaged had cognate experience in teaching a science subject that can reveal the level of terminology development within Yoruba as an adequate medium of mother tongue instruction. The result affirmed the advantages of Yoruba medium of instruction over English; however, Yoruba was not exclusively used for the pupils contrary to the expectation in the mother tongue medium of instruction policy. Most of the teachers used in the study preferred to employ a bilingual mode of instruction combining Yoruba with English, claiming that English had better educational resources for the subject they were teaching. This paper, though, based on a local case study, can be used to estimate the expected limitation to be encountered while implementing mother tongue instruction in a similar linguistic domain.

Bilingual education is in an inevitable trend of China’s higher education linking with international standards and implementing of quality education, it is also the current education reform hotspot. Bilingual education is the education methods of simultaneous using of mother tongue and non native speakers language to teach a non foreign language courses. The environment effect of bilingual education was analyzed based on a questionnaire in this paper. A lot of practical suggestions and concrete construction measures were put forward in three aspects of bilingual education: classroom environment, school environment and social environment. To this end, we should make bilingual education mode diversification, intensify efforts to train teachers, and build a good bilingual education and learning environment.

Language plays a huge role in promoting relations between people. Mother tongue, in particular, is regarded as a key element in communicating culture, familiarity, social status and cultural identity. As Nelson Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in…his language, that goes to his heart.’ Mother tongue, therefore, brings about a sense of belonging and identity since when people communicate in their mother tongue, they are able to acknowledge their roots and appreciate the history of their existence. Mother tongue brings about the unique and distinct identity of an individual through the names and naming systems, artistic skills, knowledge systems and cultural practices that the individual adopts. Despite the numerous benefits of using mother tongue in promoting culture and identity, the evolution of culture in the contemporary world has acted as a hindrance to the use and growth of mother tongue. In many places in the world, popular languages have been held more highly compared to the mother languages and people have resulted to restricting the use of their mother languages to ritualistic functions. Language genocide is becoming more popular when people forego their own mother tongues and adopt other languages fully. The result of language genocide is the complete disappearance of languages. Efforts have been put in place to redeem the glory of mother tongue language. For instance, the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) adopted in 2000 to be celebrated every 21st day of February. People from all over the world have been able to use this day to explore the significance of mother tongue languages as well as to come up with ways through which mother tongue language can be sustained despite the current trends of language in the world.

Language Maintenance and Language Shift among Keralites in Oman

Multilingualism is embedded in the Malaysian Education Blueprint (2015-2025) as a stated goal towards nation building. The education system provides opportunity to learn Malay which is the national language, the mother tongue (Mandarin or Tamil) and the English language as part of formal schooling. In fact, Malaysian primary schools are classified into two major divisions. Students can opt to study in national schools in which the medium of instruction is Malay with the provision for the learning of English and a mother tongue. The other option allows students to enrol in national-type schools of which the medium of instruction is either Mandarin or Tamil, with English and Malay taught as academic subjects. At secondary level, the medium of instruction in national schools is Malay and students are provided the opportunity to learn their mother tongue and English. Other than in school, other social milieus also allow the use and practice of these languages. Given this linguistic environment, there exists a myriad of language experiences within and outside formal learning which together would influence the totality of language vitality. This paper investigates language vitality featured in this multilingual environment. It focuses on the vitality of the English language among students that appears to co-exist with the learning and use of other languages as they progress through the primary and secondary levels. The vitality is measured by the following indicators: language preference, choice, dominance, use, attitude and motivation and proficiency which were used to develop a questionnaire to obtain data on strength evaluation of these languages. The methodology encompasses random and convenient sampling to obtain representative responses from students with different levels of education and language experiences. The study reveals relative vitalities of languages used and highlights values attached to languages at different points of language exposure that coincide with chronological age.

There is certainly found an instrumental role of primary language in early childhood development. The domains of child development and early learning are discussed in different terms and categorized in different ways in the various fields and disciplines that are involved in research, practice, and policy related to children from birth through age. The primary language has significant role for learning process in early childhood development. Keeping its importance, it is included in National Education Policy 2009. This is very general that many children speak a home language that differs from the language of instruction in education programs. Research confirms that children learn best in their mother tongue as a prelude to and complement of bilingual and multilingual education. Whether children successfully retain their mother tongue while acquiring additional languages depends on several interacting factors. This further help the students in early grades that students acquire much knowledge and easily learn in primary language. The most significant part of schooling is the early education or early development of child related to their social and educational problems ,the role of primary language cannot be ignored because such like Quetta city, the majority of the students learn education in their secondary language, the medium of instruction in private schools is mostly English and Urdu but in public school the Urdu is used commonly. However the large number of population lives in Quetta they speak their first language as Pashto, Balochi, Brahui, and Hazargi, but less number of students speak Urdu as first or primary language, not only in Quetta but also in all over the province the education system is not good enough to provide quality education to the students, the public and private schools are providing education in province but all of them lack the services

To study the relative effects of English and Xhosa as media of instruction on the academic performance of pupils whose mother tongue is Xhosa, 34 girls from among 60 doing Needlework and Clothing as a Standard Seven school subject were selected randomly. The girls were 15 to 17 years old. They were divided into equal groups of 17 on a random basis. Those who were taught in their mother tongue (Xhosa) performed significantly better than those taught in English.

Language of instruction and learning achievements inequalities in francophone Sub-Saharan Africa: A residualized quantile regression analysis using PASEC data

The Education Department of Hong Kong issued the Medium of Instruction Guidance for Secondary Schools in October 1997. The policy stipulates that the use of Chinese as the medium of instruction in all but English language and literature subjects in secondary schools will be enforced with effect from September 1998. This signals a change in language policy in post-1997 Hong Kong, from bilingual to monolingual education. Traditionally English medium instruction has been more popular than Chinese medium instruction in Hong Kong secondary schools. Despite the Hong Kong government's recent efforts to promote Chinese medium education, the number of Chinese-medium schools was small before the handover. This is a documentary study investigating changes in Hong Kong government's medium of instruction policy amid political, economic and sociolinguistic changes in the last three decades. The study also explores some possible impact of the Chinese medium instruction policy proposed in the wake of change of sovereignty on English language learning. I will critique this new policy and make recommendations pertaining to the direction of Hong Kong's language education. The theoretical underpinning of the study is bilingualism and bilingual education. The model I propose will provide new insights for language teachers, language planners and policy makers.

Although Nigeria's National Policy on Education provides for a multilingual policy involving the learning of a child's L1 or language of the immediate community (LIC), one of the three major or national languages (i.e. Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba) and English, this policy has not been effectively implemented. This paper reviews the problems and challenges of bilingual education in Nigeria and suggests ways in which bilingual programmes may be implemented successfully in the country to the maximum benefit of the students and the entire nation. To determine the attitude of students, teachers, parents and administrators towards bilingual education, the study solicited the responses of 1000 participants from five different states. The results show that the respondents preferred education in both English and the mother tongue (MT) and were not positively disposed to the use of only one of them. It is also interesting that a majority of the respondents wanted the use of the MT beyond the first three years of primary education.

This study investigated the effects of using the mother tongue as an instructional tool on the English performance of elementary students using a quasi-experimental design. The research aimed to evaluate whether the use of mother tongue in teaching English concepts significantly improves learners’ classroom test scores. A total of 59 samples were selected from two classes in a public school in the Southern part of the Philippines, with one class receiving the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in teaching English and the other as the control group using the traditional methods. Pretest and posttest performances were assessed using a teacher-made instrument with 30 questions. Data analysis involved frequency count, weighted mean, t-tests for dependent samples, and z-tests. The pretest results for both groups were similar, showing fair performance. However, the posttest results indicated a significant improvement in the learners who received mother-tongue-based instruction compared to those taught using traditional English teaching methods. Initially, both groups struggled with retaining facts and vocabulary. Despite this, the study found that using the mother tongue as an instructional tool greatly improved academic performance in English. The study recommends teacher training to effectively incorporate the mother tongue into English instruction, consistent use of the mother tongue, local contextualization of English vocabulary, and a gradual introduction of English alongside the mother tongue. Overall, the study emphasizes the positive impact of the mother tongue on English proficiency and offers practical strategies for integrating it into English language teaching.

The article is focused on the problem dealing with the methodology- and speech-oriented training of the future Master students majoring in Pre-school Education. The essence of the notion “methodological work of the educator-methodologist at a preschool institution” has been revealed; it requires, on the one hand, an excellent command of the normative literary Ukrainian language, the knowledge of the speech etiquette formulas, the culture of professional speech communication; on the other hand, ‒ the ability to provide necessary methodological assistance to the educators in implementing the content line of the Basic Component of Preschool Education (the BCPE) “Child’s Speech”, in particular, in developing various types of children’s speech and communicative competencies. The methodology as an independent science is considered in the aggregate of interconnected means, forms, methods and techniques for achieving the set educational goal. At the same time, the notion “methodology” is ambiguous; in the pedagogical science, there is a variety of phenomena: “teaching techniques”, “education methods”, “teaching methods”. The study deals with the “Methodology aimed at developing children’s speech and teaching preschool children their mother tongue” as a discipline within the curriculum of the Bachelor courses. The course “Ukrainian Preschool Linguodidactics” is taught to the Master course students: the theory of the methodology aimed at speech development, the development of speech, artistic speech and communicative-speech activities. The phenomenon “methodology- and speech-oriented training of the future masters majoring in Preschool Education” is defined as a motivational positive predisposition to master the norms of the Ukrainian language in perfection demonstrated by the future masters; the acquisition of the content and teaching methods of the discipline “Methodology aimed at developing children’s speech and teaching preschool children their mother tongue at pre-school institutions” by the undergraduate students (Bachelor courses students); the positive emotional and value-centred attitude to the implementation of the evaluative controlling educational and speech activities of children and educators in the process of methodological work at pre-school institutions, which allows providing educators with, on the one hand, methodological assistance and support, on the other hand, ‒ guarantees the efficiency of children’s speech development. The motivational orientation-targeted, cognitive-innovative, methodologically accompanying, reflexive and appraisal components comprise this training. The methodology- and speech-oriented training of the future masters majoring in Pre-school Education performs these functions: prognostic, stimulating, correctional, value-oriented, emotional. Keywords: masters, pre-school education, methods, orientation, educator-methodologist, Ukrainian Preschool Linguodidactics, speech development, education.