Cognitive Deficit The Bane Of Ghana's Education

Azindoo, China.

The recent news that Ghana educational authorities are pondering about using our local dialects as a medium of instruction in our schools has come at the right time and in the right direction.

As captained above, our education in Ghana is suffering from cognitive deficit: the limitations on processing language in the second language as in L2.

What it means is that, the English language (L2) use as a medium of instruction in our schools has caused many problems . It limits our kids to process language effectively compare to L1, ( mother tongue).The kids in our schools or even those at our second cycle and the tertiary institutions can't comprehensively use English.

The mass failures we encountered in SHS exams, JHS exams, the situation ,where kids can't read and write properperly are all due to limitations to use English properly. So, we need to look at it and find a way out .This can be done by the boldest step taken by the educational authorities to change the trend.

There are of late many theories about second language acquisition. These theories are all geared towards solving the hurdles of non-native English speakers found themselves in. It considers many factors and linguistics barriers to learning. It device many approaches to making learning easier and attainable.

The famous Grammar-Translation Method, Immersion Approach and many more are up to date approaches available currently. Adopting such approaches will help our kids understand everything.

These methods favors the use of local dialects to explain concepts, rules of grammar with no burden to be thinking too much of having to look for a dictionary to understand a word or concept.

To implement the change, Ghana education and the ministry of education need to take our teachers through In - service training with these new concepts. They must teach our teachers how to use these concepts before changing the course.

I believe, strongly , that if our mode of instruction in our educational system is changed to local dialects, we'll have massive improvements in our schools and our quest to gain technology. Our kids will now understand everything and begin thinking of how to invent wonderful things for the benefit of mother Ghana.