Tanzanian Association Oslo

aPanda hadi Darini.

Halima Mohammed Mwinshehe took her M.Phil in CIE (specialisation Education and Development) in 2002 at The University of Oslo (UiO), and started her doctoral studies in 2003. She delivered her thesis in November 2006. The doctoral commission consists of Dr.Martha Qorro, University of Dar es Salaam (former Head of Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages) -

1.opponent and Prof.Lennart Wohlgemuth, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (former Director of the Nordic Institute of African Studies) -

2.opponent . The Chair of the Commision is Prof.Arnfinn Vonen, Institute for Special Education.

Please pencil the following dates into your diary:

Thursday 24. May, probably at 2.15. p.m. Halima Mwinshehe from Tanzania will hold her doctoral lecture at Auditorium 2, Helga Engs hus, Universitetet i Oslo. On the following day, Friday 25th you should all be there at 10.15 a.m.to hear Halima officially defend her thesis.

The title of the thesis is.

Overcoming the Language Barrier. An in-depth Study of Tanzanian Secondary School Science Teachers' and Students' Strategies in Coping with the English-Kiswahili Dilemma in the Teaching/Learning Process.

The theme of this study was medium of instruction (MOI) in secondary schools in Tanzania. The study investigated the extent of the problem of English proficiency among students and teachers and the way they cope with the Kiswahili-English dilemma during science lessons. Data was collected through a mixed methods approach whereby three main methods of data collection were used viz. participant observation, interview and quasi-experiment whereby comparative teaching/learning was conducted in English, Kiswahili and code-switching.

Findings showed that English is a problem for the majority of teachers and students, majority of whom could not express themselves clearly in English. The study also showed that in classes taught in English, a number of coping strategies were used as an attempt to surmount the language barrier. Those which were more frequently used and or had a great impact on students are: code-switching, safe talk, negative reinforcement (punishment) and English teaching as a coping strategy. In classes taught in Kiswahili these coping strategies were rarely used. Test results showed that students who used Kiswahili as MOI performed better than the other two groups. Performance for English MOI was the poorest.

From the findings it was concluded that that the use of Kiswahili as MOI promote participation during lessons and improves performance in tests and minimize the differences in performance among students while for English it was the opposite, and for code-switching it was mid way. On the other hand English as MOI is a barrier to effective teaching/learning in Tanzanian secondary schools. This barrier can be surmounted by instituting Kiswahili as MOI in Tanzanian secondary schools.

Source: http://www.uv.uio.no/forsk/disputaser/Halimasammendrag.html