<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-bread-crum">
<ul>
<li class="gmail-fourth_level">
Poor English results attributed to neglect of local languages, not slang
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="gmail-new_prevarrow gmail-left_arrow1">
<a href="https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1471666/dangers-militarization"> </a><div class="gmail-article_title">
<div class="gmail-common-text gmail-no-image"><br></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-new_nextarrow gmail-right_arrow1">
<a href="https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1471693/cape-town-fresh-water-crisis-lessons-uganda"> </a><div class="gmail-article_title">
<div class="gmail-art-image">
<a href="https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1471693/cape-town-fresh-water-crisis-lessons-uganda"><img alt="Image" src="https://www.newvision.co.ug/w-images/de69d9ed-d66a-4858-8b89-936b1e89f852/2/KantAteenyi-75x75.jpg"></a>
</div>
<div class="gmail-common-text"><br></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-container_left">
<div class="gmail-top-story-block">
<h1>Poor English results attributed to neglect of local languages, not slang </h1>
<div class="gmail-posted-by">
<div class="gmail-author">
<p>
By Admin
</p>
</div>
<div class="gmail-publish-date">
<p>
Added 21st February 2018 07:07 PM
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-article-description gmail-dhide-680">
<p>
Educational authorities as a first step, should aim at persuading
the unwilling public to accept education through the local language
</p>
</div>
<div class="gmail-article-content">
<div class="gmail-article-image">
<a href="https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1471692/poor-english-results-attributed-neglect-local-languages-slang"><img src="https://www.newvision.co.ug/w-images/c51d0dda-f7f1-4922-adfe-a3e5c338d800/2/GodfreySentumbwe1-703x422.jpg" alt="Godfreysentumbwe1 703x422"></a>
</div>
<div class="gmail-container_ad gmail-dhide-768">
<div id="gmail-div-gpt-ad-1496656157133-0" style="height:90px;width:670px">
<div id="gmail-google_ads_iframe_/16375024/2016_NV_SPG_AD1_728X90_dtop_0__container__" style="border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:0pt;display:inline-block;width:670px;height:90px"></div></div>
</div>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline">EDUCATION | LANGUAGE</span></p>
<p><strong>By Godfrey Sentumbwe </strong></p>
<p>The dismal performance in English language in the 2017 UCE exams,
according to experts, has been attributed to slang on social media and
television (see ‘Poor English results attributed to slang’, New Vision,
Friday, February 9, 2018).<br><br>The experts further contend that
because English has almost become the mother tongue in peoples’ homes,
there is a laissez-faire attitude by pupils to use it correctly in
exams.<br><br>However, when put under close scrutiny, these arguments do
not wholly address the bigger picture of massive failures in English
and other subjects across primary, secondary and tertiary levels. These
arguments presuppose that the majority of primary and secondary students
have access to smartphones, TVs and come from homes where English is
used.<br><br>While this is true for urban students and those from
wealthier homes, many students in Uganda come from poorer rural families
where parents hardly communicate in English, lack TV and phones. <br><br>Secondly
massive failure in English and other subjects is not a problem
affecting Uganda alone, but other African countries with similar
educational, economic and socio-cultural characteristics. For example on
February 18, 2013, the government of Tanzania announced that 240,903
out of 397,126 students who sat the 2012 National Form 4 (S.4) exams
failed. This put the failure rate at 61%, while only 6% received a
meaningful pass rate of divisions 1, 2 and 3 combined! Therefore, the
deeper cause of massive exam failure for multilingual post-colonial
states in Africa lies with the language of education policy particularly
the model adopted and its implementation at the basic education level.<br><br><strong> </strong><br><strong>Language education policy</strong><br><br>Whereas
the language of education policy recognises the use of Ugandan
languages as medium of learning in primary school, the policy adopts an
early-exit model. Here local languages are used up to P.3, thereafter
giving way to English. The local languages are merely used to mitigate
the nefarious effects of transition from the home to school and not for
transferring knowledge acquired through local languages to learn in
English, which requires six to eight years of primary according to all
available research.<br><br>The pedagogical limitation of this model in
relation to English language mastery is that by Primary Four, what the
child might have acquired is ‘everyday’ local language proficiency but
not ‘academic’ local language proficiency transferrable in learning in
English! Because the transition from local language to English medium
instruction is done early, children do not acquire literacy mastery in
both local language and English. Hence the usual poor national
assessments of children’s reading results presented annually by
organisations such as Uwezo.<br><br>This is further compounded by the
confusion in understanding the difference between using English to teach
academic subjects and English as a subject in the curriculum. This
confusion affects the quality and quantity of teaching English and in
English, and the nature of the environment in which English learning
takes place. When teaching using English, teachers struggle to transfer
knowledge to pupils who hardly understand what is being said in English.
This takes us to UNESCO’s 2016 title of its Policy Paper 24 – ‘If you
don’t understand, how can you learn’? And by extension we can ask; if
you don’t understand, how can you perform well in exams?<br><br>At the
same time, teaching English as a subject in many primary and secondary
school classrooms is hampered by absence of teachers with native-speaker
or near native-speaker mastery and proficiency in English. Such
teachers who are not proficient in English themselves rely more on
drilling and memorisation of knowledge so as to maintain an appearance
of ‘doing the lesson’, while little learning is actually taking place.
Hence their students will have difficulty in grammar, spelling, tenses,
punctuations and sentence construction as observed by the Uganda
National Examinations Board Secretary while releasing UCE examination
results early this month.<br><br><strong>What should be done?</strong></p>
<p>Educational authorities as a first step, should aim at persuading the
unwilling public to accept education through the local language. And
the authorities should be supported to do this by stakeholders in the
political, business and media. This is because the choices of medium of
instruction in multilingual states like Uganda are more informed by
political, economic and ideological considerations than strictly
educational ones.<br><br>Secondly, educational authorities should
demonstrate through improved teacher training and resourcing that it is
possible for students to acquire a good knowledge of English without
using it as the medium of instruction for other subjects as is the
current practice.<br><br>This may, therefore, call for radical changes
in teaching and examination practices. Instead of an early-exit local
language model, a late-exit local language model of six to eight years
of local language medium instruction should be adopted, in addition to
having English language subject specialist teachers in place. In
addition, the idea of ‘English-only classrooms’ should be replaced with a
policy which enables teachers to strategically use all of their
linguistic resources, including students’ languages for teaching in
upper primary and secondary.<br><br>This is a component of the flexible
multilingual education policy, which recognises the value of English as a
national and international lingua franca, but requiring a move away
from promoting unattainable purist approaches to teaching and learning
English like in the current Ugandan circumstances. This flexibility
should also promote the use of local languages in exams.<br><br>A 2017
report titled ‘Multilingual classrooms: opportunities and challenges
from English medium instruction in low and middle income contexts’ cites
studies conducted in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda, which are instructive.<br><br>It
was found that students who had scored poorly in English reading
assessments achieved much higher grades on similar reading tasks in
local language. Perhaps Ugandan students would also do much better if
teaching and exams were both in English and local languages!<br><br>We
conclude with a statement from the British Council’s 2017 position on
English in mother tongue-based multilingual education and a Luganda
proverb respectively: ‘Fluency in English is best served through
strengthening the teaching of English as a subject. Therefore, the
English medium of instruction at primary school level in low- or
middle-income countries is not beneficial nor is it a policy or practice
we support’. And the Luganda proverb: ‘Olaba Pokino akulembeddemu nga
ate obuuza eridda e Buddu?’ literally translates as; If you see Pokino
(Buddu County chief) leading the way, do you have to ask the route to
Buddu?</p></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>