Linguist lauds Education Ministry

A linguist on Monday lauded the Education Ministry and the Ghana Education Service for promoting early grade literacy in the country.

Dr Charles Marfo, Vice President of the Linguistics Association of Ghana, described the Ministry’s recent launch of the Integrated Approach to Literacy Teachers’ Guides designed to achieve a common strategy for teaching literacy and language acquisition in both Ghanaian and English Languages for preschool and primary one to three as a step in the right direction.

He said research had shown that when children were taught in their mother tongue at the lower primary and the preschool levels, they understand things better and are well grounded to become bilingual or multi-lingual.

Dr Marfo was speaking to the GNA in Accra on the sideline of the Seventh Annual Conference of the Linguistics Association of Ghana (LAG) on the theme “Harnessing Linguistic Resources For Effective Academic/Professional Practice”.

He explained that the mother-tongue based literacy instruction approach aided children to develop literacy and language skills first in their local language and systematically transfer these skills to English through a teacher gradually introducing age-appropriate lessons in English Language.

He commended Professor L. A. Boadi, Prof Akosua Anyidoho and Prof Florence Abena Dolphyne all of the University of Ghana for championing the campaign of local language early grade literacy in the country.

He said globalization in a way was having a form of negative impact on local languages, adding that if care was not take, this might lead to the extinction of some local languages.

Dr Marfo, who is the former Head of the Department of Modern Languages, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, said language was life, since everyday endeavor of life was expressed through language.

He said there were the need for certain professions in the country to begin to see the need for using local languages in their service delivery.

Dr Marfo urged the academia to encourage the broadcast media to use more local languages.