Abstract

The study set out to investigate the Effects of mother Tongue on students’ academic performance in the English Language in the Buea Municipality (a) to investigate the perception of students on the influence of mother tongue on the performance of English, (b) To determine if mother tongue interference influence on the written on the English of secondary school students(c) to determine if mother tongue interference influence on the written on the English of secondary school students (d) to determine if mother tongue interference influence on spoken English of secondary school students, (e) to examine the challenges mother tongue, bring about to students in the process of learning English. From these objectives, four research questions were formulated and hypotheses state in both null and alternative forms were equally formulated.

The study adopted the survey research design with a sample of 150 forms five students from three government secondary schools under operation in the Buea municipality through a Purposive and convenient sampling procedure. The study used a questionnaire for data collection. Results of the study revealed education planners and practitioners were concern about student’s poor performance in the English language.

The F-value calculated was 2.409 indicating a significant model for the relationship as given by the regression coefficients, which means that the overall model was statistically significant and reliable in explaining the influence of the predictor variables on academic performance.

Base on the findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn that mother tongue influences the way they pronounce certain words in the English language, the study recommended that students should develop a good reading habits by always visiting the school library, following up on good TV programs that will educate in terms of English language.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

Mother tongue is one of the supreme assets people bring to the task of foreign language learning and provides a language Acquisition Support System. The significance of English in our era cannot be denied. Also English is one of the greatest second languages in the world.

It has become the international language of science, technology, commerce, business, international politics, and diplomacy. It is estimated that 1.4 billion people use English as their official language. It is the language of more than 1500 million nonnative speakers’. It is claimed that three out of four speakers of English are nonnatives.

Cameroon is among one of the most multilingual countries in Africa consists of about 23,924,000 inhabitants and is home to a total of 283 languages, of which 274 are living and 9 are dead or extinct. Considering the living languages, 270 are indigenous and 4 are non-indigenous.

Again, 12 are institutional, 98 are developing, 70 are vigorous, 76 are in trouble and 18 are dying (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2019). Interestingly also, three of Africa’s four language families cut across these: Niger-Kordofanian Bantu languages occupy the rainforests in the south of Cameroon, the Bantoid languages that stretch through the central grass fields, the northern deserts of the country are home to Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages and some Arabic speakers in the Far North Region (Fonlon, 1969, as cited in Parker, 2017).

This study builds on the basis of mother tongue and education achievement of secondary school students in the English language attempts an explanation of the advantages of teaching Cameroonians to read and write in their indigenous languages.  This chapter focuses on the background of the study, conceptual background, theoretical background, contextual background, empirical background, statement of the problem, research objective, research questions, justification, the scope of the study, significance of the study, the definition of terms.

1.1 Background of the Study

Mother’s tongue has a long history that can be traced back to the beginning of mankind; The origin of language is a hotly contested topic, with some languages tentatively traced back to the Paleolithic. However, archaeological and written records extend the history of language into ancient times and the Neolithic.

The distribution of languages has changed substantially over time. Major regional languages like Elamite, Sogdian, Koine Greek, or Nahuatl in ancient, post-classical, and early modern times have been overtaken by others due to changing balance of power, conflict, and migration (Wikipedia,2021).

The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. Between 1900 and 1945 the Japanese Sprachraum briefly underwent rapid expansion as the Empire of Japan took control of Korea and Taiwan, instituting Japanese as the official language in its colonies

According to Ivan Illich, the term “mother tongue” was first used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin, when they were “speaking from the pulpit”. That is, the “holy mother the Church” introduced this term and colonies inherited it from Christianity as a part of Colonialism. J. R. R. Tolkien, in his 1955 lecture “English and Welsh”, distinguishes the “native tongue” from the “cradle tongue”. The latter is the language one learns during early childhood, and one’s true “native tongue” may be different, possibly determined by an inherited linguistic taste, and may later in life be discovered by a strong emotional affinity to a specific dialect (Tolkien personally confessed to such an affinity to the Middle English of the West Midlands in particular). On 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day.

In Africa, when Kenya attained self-rule in 1963, English was declared the official language (the Republic of Kenya, 1964). It was to be used in all important government sectors including education. This policy re-emphasized what was already in place as a result of colonial language policy. At this particular point in time, the Ministry of Education took steps in line with language policy.

In 1964, the Kenya Education Commission mounted a survey to establish the interests of the citizens with regard to language use. The findings revealed that most people wanted a trilingual approach to education (Ministry of Education, 2012).

During this period, mother tongue was preferred for verbal communication especially in rural areas, while English and Kiswahili were preferred for education from lower primary to the university. Kiswahili was especially favored in education for purposes of national and regional unity. However, unlike English, mother tongue languages were not anchored into the school curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2012).

After becoming a German protectorate in 1884, native languages were encouraged and used in German-run missionary schools across the country (Fonlon 1969). Languages such as Bamun and Fulfulde, which had already achieved some degree of standardization and literary development, thrived in schools and public domains under the German system (Echu 2013). After WWI, however, control of what is now Cameroon shifted to the French and the British, bringing changes to language policy in its wake.

The French insisted on the policy of Assimilation in their share of the country, imposing solely French medium instruction from the onset of schooling. Under Assimilation, Cameroonians were discouraged and even punished for using their native languages in schools, the French going so far as even referring to native languages simply as, “dialects,” or, “patois.” The British, on the other hand, managed Northern and Southern Cameroons alongside Nigeria opting for Indirect Rule. Under the British system, primary school students studied in their native languages during the first few years of schooling and later switched to English- medium education in higher grades (Albaugh 2007).

The shadows of these two colonial systems are reflected heavily in the language policies of former British and French colonies in Africa as Anglophone states tend to prefer some form of native-language education while Francophone states opt for French alone. In the case of Cameroon, upon the independence and reunification of both sections of the country in 1960 and 1961 respectively, the European-only educational system preferred by the French became the standard for the entire country as it widely remains today.

Contextual background

Since reunification in 1961, Cameroon has implemented an exoglossic language policy based on the exclusive use of English and French as the languages of teaching and learning (Chiatoh, 2012). In adopting this policy, politicians preoccupied with the desire to consolidate national unity completely ignored the eventual consequences of such an educational option on the critical question of educational quality. Today, 50 years afterward, these consequences are surfacing with concerns being intensified about the falling standards of the English language in particular and the decline in academic performance across the curriculum in general.

A closer look at the present situation reveals that even though concerns about quality decline are genuine, their causes have not been properly diagnosed. Arguments tend to center almost exclusively on peripheral areas such as linguistic interference, the training of teachers (Fontem and Oyetade, 2005) choice of pedagogic materials, and teaching methods.

As yet, only very passive attention has been paid to the central question of the proper choice of language of instruction which research and classroom practice has revealed to be the most fundamental factor in establishing the quality of educational provision. As such, half a century since the adoption of this policy, its application has still not been adapted to the realities of the Cameroonian classroom.

Similarly, despite more than thirty years of experimentation of mother tongue-based bilingual education as an alternative to educational innovation (Mba and Chiatoh, 2000), the government is still lukewarm towards integrating mother tongues into the educational system particularly at the primary level.

Perhaps, it is worth noting that mother tongue education remains an experimental program in Cameroon despite more than 30 years of experimentation because the mother tongue is not yet part of a comprehensive language policy in which the place of indigenous languages vis-à- vis English and French are well-defined (Mbuagbaw, 2000:141).

Theoretical background

Three theories will be used to inform the objective of the study; these theories include: acculturation theory, the Constructivist theory, the cognitive theory, and social perspective theory

Acculturation Theory (1978)

This theory seeks to inform the main objective, Acculturation states that Second Language Acquisition is the result of acculturation, which he defines as “the social and psychological integration of the learner with the target language (TL) group” (Schumann, 1978, p. 29). The major claim of the theory is that acculturation, which is a cluster of social-psychological factors, is the major cause of Second Language Acquisition (Schumann, 1990).

The Constructivist theory (1939) This theory seeks to inform the first objective of the study. Constructivism is a view that emphasizes the active role of students in building understanding and making sense of the information. The constructivist teaching is learner-centered where students are actively involved in knowledge construction rather than mere passive listeners. Constructivists’ views can be organized in two forms: psychological and social. In Psychological constructivists’ view such as Piaget, students construct knowledge by transforming, organizing, reorganizing previous knowledge whereas, in social constructivists’ view such as Vygotsky, opportunities are provided to students to learn through social interaction in the construction of knowledge and understanding.

Gestalt / Cognitive Theory (1979)

Gestalt theory, with a focus on organization provided by the mind, posed certain dilemmas to the strict behaviorists. According to Chomsky, higher-order functioning, such as language acquisition and problem-solving, could not be accounted for by stimulus-response reinforcement. (For example, people would have to learn sentences at a rate faster than one per second for even small vocabularies.) The cognitive revolution led to the notion that humans are active processors of information.

Furthermore, cognitive psychologists introduced the concept of mental representations and suggested a computational metaphor (with the computer). In this case, encoding specificity was introduced as the means by which transfer of learning took place (Thompson & Tulving, 1970; Baddeley, 1998). But, it should be noted that the metaphor of the computer still implied an external focus, given that data and instructions must be provided from outside the organism

Perspective Theory

Given this emphasis on the social, cultural, and historical contexts, such theories fall near the environment-centered end of the continuum. These approaches have been labeled sociocultural perspective (Wertsch, 1991), social constructivism (Palinscar, 1998; Turner, 1995; Turner & Meyer, 2000), sociohistorical theory (Wertsch, del Rio, & Alvarez, 1995), and socio-cultural-historical psychology (Cole, 1995). The development of cognition comes from the internalization of social interactions, and knowledge is constructed by and distributed among individuals and groups as they interact with one another. Thus, experiences are shared, and learning and knowledge emerge from participation in social interaction. Vygotsky (1979) suggested that learning occurs when a person internalizes the social experiences of interacting with another person; such internalization results in inner speech and thought processes. These theories point toward the importance of considering the training environment, the organizational context, and the broader social and cultural context. At the very least, such theories contribute to the notions of cooperative learning environments and contextualized activities.

Statement of the Problem

Students’ academic performance in the English Language in Cameroon secondary school is a call for concern, performance of Secondary school students in the English Language both in everyday communication and examinations have experienced a decline over the years. The climax was the very poor performances registered in the

G.C.E. O/L English language examination of 2014 where there was a meagre 13% success for a subject which constitutes a basic university entry requirement for many Anglo-Saxon based Universities for this group of students. As if this was not bad enough, the newly introduced Advanced level English language paper of 2015 G.C.E. examination produced an even worse result with a maiden attempt performance of 8% pass in the subject.

The intriguing situation is the fact that the English language is the medium through which all the other school certificate subjects are taught and learned. It is assumed that a better mastery of the English language will greatly enhance comprehension and performances in the other subjects and permit these users to function well in this country where English and French are official languages superposed on about 273 indigenous languages.

The language policy in Cameroon prioritize these languages to the detriment of mother tongues, and the ramification is borne by the learners. If the national curriculum is transmitted in the indigenous mother tongues, children will better grasp the content of lessons. Out of two hundred and eighty-three indigenous languages in Cameroon, none has the status of a national or official language. Empirical research has shown that national languages are the ideal languages in education. Paraguay, for example, is the only Latin American nation with a distinctive national language – Guaraní (see Holmes, 2013).

Language-in-education policy states that native languages are not only preferable but vital to success. Children faced problems where only English from the first day of school, they are not able to fully grasp the content of their lessons. For many children, this lack of understanding will negatively impact their entire education, leading to poor performance and high rates of drop-out.

Without finishing school, the cycle of illiteracy and poverty continues it’s against this background that the researcher endeavored to investigate the influence of native tongue on the performance of English.

Objectives of the Study

Main Objective

The main objective of the study is to investigate the Effects of mother Tongue on students’ academic performance in the English Language in the Buea Municipality.

Specific Objectives

1. To investigate the perception of students on the influence of mother tongue on the performance of English.
2. To determine if mother tongue interference influences the written the English of secondary school students.
3. To determine if mother tongue interference influences spoke English of secondary school students.
4. To examine the challenges mother tongue, bring about to students in the process of learning English.