THE USE OF MOTHER-TONGUE, EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Mother tongue can be defined as the language which a group of people considered to? Inhabitant of an area acquired in the early years and which eventually becomes their natural instrument of though and communication. Mother tongue is the first language that a person learned. It is therefore generally accepted in teaching and learning processes, the mother tongue of the child of utmost important. For one things it categorize a large part of the child’s environment, that, it has names for most of the object action, idea, attribute and so on that are so important to him, as well as to any society. In many developing countries todays, this is either local language or the language of the previous colorizing power. The mother tongue is child’s environment and is the natural basis on which verbal skill can be build children learn through communication in a language which they understood. It was in recognition of the important and contribution of mother tongue to education that made the federal ministry of education` in collaboration with either educational statutory agencies include in the National Policy on Education published in 1977, revised in 1981, the use of mother tongue as a medium of educating pupils at primary level through out the country. According to the national Policy on Education (FRN, 2004) “Government will ensure that medium of instruction will be principally the mother tongue or the language of the immediate community” in terms of that view the person is a native speaker of the language, although one may also be a native speaker of more than one language if all of language we learned without formal education such as through cultural immersion before puberty of ten a child learns the basic of the first language(s) from family. The mother tongue medium education at the primary school level is provided less than twenty Nigerian language throughout the country.

English is the exclusive medium of instruction at the primary level of education. The addition to appreciating the important of language in educational process and as a mean of preserving people’s culture, the government considers it in the best interest of national unity that each child should be encourage to learn one of the three major language which is the mother tongue.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Specifically, the study seeks to examine the effective of the mother tongue in the teaching and learning in primary schools and thus to get an insight into how the mother tongue should be established in schools and the use of mother tongue should be encouraged in the teaching-learning process and this is a process because of use of mother tongue pupil will not understand the topic and learning and teaching will not be effective. The understanding of these effectiveness would help to pin point what exactly are the things responsible for the deficiencies in the mother tongue language and this will turn yield.

1.3 Purpose of Study

The general purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between the use of mother tongue and effective teaching and learning in Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area of Lagos State. Specifically it is: (1) To facilitate the development of reading ability and literacy skill in mother tongue in schools. (2) To improve communication and interaction the classroom and the integration of African culture and indigenous knowledge system into formal school curriculum. (3) To develop effective reading, writing and literacy in the mother tongue pupils can develop adequate literacy skill that they can use in learning official language. (4) To develop effective teaching that can lead to more successful learning opportunities in classroom where language familiar to both children and teacher are used as L1 at least in the first three years of education. (5) The revitalized the use of mother tongue within a bi-multilingual educational framework, studies related to bi-multilingual education in Africa indicated that use of mother tongue is basis education produces positive outcome if carefully implemented.