Addressing language barriers in education

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• mensah abrampa 10 years ago

  I agree one hundred per cent with you. Living in the US, it didn't take long for me to realize that an average five year old American first grader has a better grasp of the English language than an average fifteen year old in ...
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  I agree one hundred per cent with you. Living in the US, it didn't take long for me to realize that an average five year old American first grader has a better grasp of the English language than an average fifteen year old in any level of education in Ghana. Learning in one's first language or mother tongue as we call it has a lot of advantages. It makes learning much easier than learning in an adopted or second language. Ghanaians living in especially the UK and the US sometimes struggle to communicate effectively in english because their thoughts are first formed in the first language and they have to translate those thoughts word for word from Twi, Ga, Ewe, etc into english for his American or British listener . Sometimes even simpler things become harder to understand the way you intend it to be understood .
  We have different sense of humor so what's funny to an average american may not be so funny to an african. Sometimes we miss the humor entirely because we will in all likelihood express the same humor using different set of words that will hardly make any meaning to an american.
  Apart from making learning easier, more enjoyable and more tolerable, learning in one's first language will also help to preserve and refine our local languages and culture that seem to be fading away because of neglect. Many of our children cannot cope with learning and become early dropouts because learning in english hinders their understanding of the subject. Let's teach in our local languages in every level of education but teach english and french very intensively as second and third languages.

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• Prof Lungu 10 years ago

  Insightful, directly policy-relevant!
  How fast could we develop Ghana, if...
  
  READ: "...The youth can express themselves and make meaning out of diverse and complex situations when discussed in their local dialect...For us ...
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  Insightful, directly policy-relevant!
  How fast could we develop Ghana, if...
  
  READ: "...The youth can express themselves and make meaning out of diverse and complex situations when discussed in their local dialect...For us to travel to many places and exhibit our talent and intelligence, we must learn and comprehend our disciplines through our local dialects and have the ability to explain and translate what we have learned...".
  
  OUR COMMENT: We are guessing the "...major failure of many intelligent Africans..." with respect to this matter has to do in part with the multiplicity of languages in the first place.
  
  The Japanese, after all, have basically one language, with their variations in Hiragana and Katakana kanji(scripts), mostly derived from the Chinese. However, long ago, in ~1948, the Japanese, through conscious public policy reduced the number of kanji characters and even prohibited certain words/characters, such a using them to name children.
  
  In Ghana, we can assume we may have to train teachers in each local language, or select group, teachers who can also teach the basic sciences and mathematics, (and in addition the lingua franca, at the appropriate level(s).
  
  That is where we find the failure, of vision and action - failure to plan for the future!

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• Prof Lungu 10 years ago

  Imagine, just hitting "Post" and hearing, on Al Jezeera America, the bizarre story of a 60+ years old "Canadian" who is not Canadian, can't have a Canadian passport.
  
  Apparently, his "intelligent" parents, anarchist, presum ...
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  Imagine, just hitting "Post" and hearing, on Al Jezeera America, the bizarre story of a 60+ years old "Canadian" who is not Canadian, can't have a Canadian passport.
  
  Apparently, his "intelligent" parents, anarchist, presumably, refused to register (decide) the boy when he was born near the US-Canada border. The man has lived all his life in Canada and believes he was born in Canada.
  
  However, he has never been able to get even a Canadian driver's license.
  
  So now, all his hopes are on a solitary judge, to use his "discretion"/intelligence, to solve the problem created by his parents/who neglected to plan, more than 60 years ago.
  
  That, again, is where we find the failure - of vision and action - failure to plan for the future, by people who ought to have seen all those implications in the face of their child, and those yet unborn.
  
  Thanks, Mr. Joshua Amponsem!

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