It should be noted that no serious examination of the uses of language proceeds very far without considering the relation between the English language and learning.
Learning often involves and occurs through language, and provides a powerful motive for its continued development, both in school and out of school.
The practical matter of participating in the world’s affairs, and the human need to interpret and make sense of experience as spectators, involve learning, language development and the interaction of language and learning.
Introduction
James Britton’s “Language and Learning'(1970) has had a marked influence on language across the curriculum.
It begins with a discussion of language as a primary means whereby human beings construct the mental representations of reality that guide their perceptions and actions and ‘learning ‘in the most fundamental and global sense.
In the same vein, the Bullock report (1970) follows its introductory chapters on the reasons and intentions of the study.
Focus 1
It introduces its discussion of language development with a chapter on “Language and Learning”, reiterating Britton’s contention that language is first and foremost an intellectual tool by which experiences are interpreted and organised into generalised representations.
It is formulating and reformulating what is known about the world, especially in the process of learning and writing.
Also in the internal language that accompanies reading and listening, knowledge is actively brought into being, and at the same time, the mental operations that constitute cognitive growth are developed.
Except perhaps for simple rote memorisation, and purely retained visual imagery and muscular movements.
Focus 2
The process of learning always involves the reformation, interpretation, and contemplation of experiences and given information.
Talk and writing are significant parts of the process, even if their talk occurs subvocally as inner speech.
Pupil language, and especially their information, personal ‘expressive’ language, is important to the learning process in four critical ways, all of which have implications for teachers and subjects across the curriculum.
Focus 3
First, language is involved in developing pupils’ interest and their commitment to learning, since it is through talking or writing about a subject that they are likely to locate the links between given topics and information and their concerns and experiences.
Second, language is part of the process by which pupils get information.
The process of interpreting and understanding information and concepts, or experiences, is largely a matter of establishing the relationship between new and prior knowledge and experiences, and these links are normally forged through language.
Focus 4
The practical implications of both of these points are developed by Martins (1976) in “Writing and Learning Across the Curriculum”, 11-16 years and in the work of Torbe and Medway (1981) in “The Climate for Learning”.
The third important relationship between language and the learning process is that, although the precise relationship between thought and language remains a matter of controversy.
There is doubt that in the process of solving problems and coming to understand complex experiences, processes.
Focus 5
It involves various forms of talking and writing-pupils develop mental operators which help them with subsequent thinking and learning. This point is made in the Bullock report’s case for language across the curriculum.
“While many teachers recognise that their own is to initiate a student in a particular mode of analysis, they rarely recognise… that the mental processes they seek to foster are the outcomes of a development that originates in speech”.
Focus 5
Fourth, it is only through expressed language that the learner’s mental operations and learning processes become available for inspection and consideration by the learner or the teacher. According to Britton (1970), language is the exposed edge of providing teachers and the learners themselves with the means to assess and work on the learners’ cognitive processes and development.
Since it has been established that it is through expressed language that the learner’s mental operations and learning processes become available, what then is the language situation in Nigerian education?
Focus 6
After independence in Nigeria, the concern of language planners is focused on the need for socio-cultural integration and authenticity. Nigeria is therefore interested in conducting its affairs in the most efficient way possible.
She tends to look outwards to a language of wider communication which is already associated with high technology and higher education (Bamgbose,1979).
The nation is also interested in the preservation of its cultural heritage and the bridging of the gap between the elite and the masses, and this naturally makes it look inward to one or more indigenous languages (Bamgbose,1978).
Focus 7
As a result of this need, many scholars advocated the formulation of a precise national policy on language education for the country. Some of these scholars are Afolayan (1969), Onwubu (1976) and Adekunle (1976).
These scholars argued that Nigerian languages should be used along with the English language as a mmediumof instruction. They also backed up their argument with the advantages that can be derived from bilingual or multilingual education.
Focus 8
Consequently, in 1977, the educational policy that emerged yielded to the scholars’ agitations and recognised the place of the indigenous languages in education. The language component of the educational policy contained the following points as summarised by Data (1985).
1. The Federal Government considers it to be in the interest of national unity that each child should be encouraged to learn one of the three major Nigerian languages other than his mother tongue (the major languages in Nigeria being identified are Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba).
2. The medium of instruction at the pre-primary level will be principally the mother tongue or the language of the immediate community. This would oblige the government to:
(i) Develop the orthography of many Nigerian languages.
(ii) Produce textbooks and other materials in Nigerian languages.
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3. The government will see to it that the medium of instruction in primary school is initially the mother tongue or the language of the immediate community, and at a later stage, English.
4. A promise by the government to supply specialist teachers via teacher training colleges.
5. At the secondary level, English fully becomes the language of instruction, while Nigerian languages are taught as subjects.
6. Foreign languages like French may be taught later at the secondary level.
Focus 8
With this type of policy stipulated and the actual language situation in the nation’s educational scene, the type of bilingual educational system that is practised is the transitional bilingual educational system.
This is a situation where the mother tongue is used in the early years solely to allow the pupils to adjust to school and to master the subject matter until their English is developed enough to be used for instruction (Adeyanju, 1982).
Focus 9
As such, in Nigeria, a Nigerian language of wider communication is used as a medium of instruction for the first two, three or even four years of schooling, and a transition to English is then effected.
Therefore, with this practice, it was hoped that learning would become easier for the child by instilling confidence in him, helping him to think clearly in his language, and also equipping him with enough English competency for the years after that, when all education is imparted through the medium of English.
Focus 10
However, this policy has some problems. The multiplicity of the language situation in the country posed some problems in the adoption of the use of mother tongues in the early stages in schools.
This is because the use of more than 394 languages to teach in primary 1 -3 or 4 may not be convenient at all for active learning to take place.
The use of mother tongues, i.e. several languages as media of instruction, is then viewed as uneconomical from the point of view of materials, teacher training and mobility teachers (Dada, 1994).
Focus 11
Besides, the use of the mother tongue in schools, especially for the relatively small number of speakers, is also a problem, except with the large languages, which are very few in the country (Bamgbose, 1979).
It is also pertinent to mention that there is a lack of up-to-date linguistic statistics in the country.
This is the survey of the actual number of languages in any given state, the census of their speakers and the development of the language.
Focus 12
The absence of this basic statistic is responsible for the use of Nigerian languages that are not the mother tongues of some pupils as a means of educating them.
There are also sociolinguistic problems that are affecting the Nigerian language policy. The educated parents and the elites want their children to go to special schools and international schools.
They may start learning the English Language from an early age. In a few cases, parents even make their children speak this language at home (Bamgbose, 1979).
Focus 13
With this practice, it became obvious that it is only the children from uneducated homes that do attend public schools where their mother tongue is used as a medium of instruction in the first few years.
This creates a lack of uniformity in primary school education, and the comparability of students’ performance at the end of their primary education is very difficult to do (LGE, 1999).
In Nigeria today, the need for internal communication, the need for technical or scientific communication and the need for international communication, as asserted by Adekunle (1979), makes the societal attitude to the teaching and learning of mother tongues lukewarm and unencouraging.
Focus 14
The English language fills the huge communication gap. It facilitates contact between Nigerians of diverse language backgrounds because the Nigerian language situation is one in which many languages co-exist (PaiObayan, 1982).
Each language is used by its native speakers for most of their everyday communication activities. In each of the regions of the country.
There is at least one language which has the largest number of speakers, and despite this fact, no single Nigerian language has yet emerged as the country’s dominant language (Pai Obanyan, 1982).
Focus 15
As a result of this, inter-ethnic communication is not all that easy. The English language, therefore, fills the wide gap of communication.
The fact that the English language is needed for communication at both national and international levels influenced its teaching and acceptance. It is also needed for transactions anthe d transmission of ideas with other countries in the world.
It has reached the level of a second language, and it is more or less our lingua franca. It is the official language of the country. All these factors account for its continual use in the Nigerian educational system.
Conclusion
The inadequate teaching materials to teach constituted another pedagogical problem in bilingual education in Nigeria. This problem is preventing functional literacy in Nigerian languages and possiblylifelongg reading habits in them (Adeyanju, 1982).
Most of the publishing houses in Nigeria are geared toward printing books in the English language rather than in indigenous languages because it is more expensive to print texts in the local languages.
This is because special symbols have to be improvised and hand-set. This type of special symbol is very costly (Bamgbose, 1979). However, the government’s aim toward this policy is to attain national and international goals, but to what extent has this been achieved? Read more related posts on our research page of the site.
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