Wednesday 20. June 2007, at 10.15 Central European Time (CET). Mwajuma Vuzo from Tanzania will hold her doctoral lecture at Auditorium 2, Helga Engs hus, University of Oslo. On the same day, Wednesday 20th June, 2007 , you should all be there at 12.15 CET hear Mwajuma officially defend her thesis.
Tittle of her Ph.D thesis:
Revisiting the language policy in Tanzania: A comparative study of geography classes taught in Kiswahili and English
Summary:
In 1969 the Tanzanian government started working on the possibility of extending the use of Kiswahili medium of instruction (MOI) to post-primary levels of education. In 1997 it reiterated this stance by declaring the cultural policy (sera ya utamaduni). However to date this plan is yet to be achieved. English remains the medium of instruction despite the fact that teachers and students are incompetent in the language and face enormous difficulties using it. The switch in Form I is especially problematic. In order to attain meaningful learning, code switching to Kiswahili is a common phenomenon in classrooms despite the fact that national examinations would still be set in English.
The objective of the study was to find out if there were differences shown in Form I geography classes taught in different MOI: English the official MOI to date, Kiswahili which is the proposed MOI and code switching, the unofficial MOI currently in use. The study was conducted in two government secondary schools. The main data gathering techniques used in this study were: a quasi experiment in which two tests were administered, classroom observations, document analysis and interviews with headmasters, teachers and students of the respective schools. The central theoretical framework guiding the study was linguistic imperialism. Qualification analysis theory and teaching and learning theories supplemented this framework.
Overall findings indicated that there were differences in teaching and learning when the different MOI were used. Students’ test performance showed that students taught in Kiswahili MOI performed considerably better than the others and had minimal disparities between them. Students in code switching as MOI classes were in the mediocre position. Students taught in English performed most poorly. Students taught in English MOI also had quite large disparities between them in comparison to other MOI. Classroom observations showed that in English MOI classes, memorization and chorus teaching, characteristics of safe talk prevailed. For these reasons, the qualifications gained by students in English MOI classes, for the most part were directly and indirectly accepting adaptability qualifications. In order for effective teaching and learning to take place it was stated by the majority of students that in English MOI, code switching to Kiswahili was very important. On the contrary code switching was not needed in Kiswahili MOI classes since students claimed to understand easily. It was noted from classroom observations that in code switching MOI that there was no formula in the use of the different languages. In some cases teachers used more Kiswahili and less English and vice versa applied though rarely. Student participation in code switching as the MOI classes was highly depended on the use of Kiswahili such that, the more the Kiswahili used the more the participation.
Teachers claimed that they expressed themselves better in Kiswahili MOI and students alleged that they learnt better. Classroom interaction was higher in Kiswahili MOI in comparison to other MOI. The requisite methodology for teaching geography as in the geography syllabus; the discovery strategy was utilized mainly in Kiswahili MOI and to some extent in CS MOI. Kiswahili MOI thus inculcated creativity and independence which led students to achieve creative and general proficiency qualifications. Interviews with a good number of respondents showed that maintaining English as a MOI is largely driven by perceptions accentuating linguistic imperialism. Moreover there were widespread misconceptions between learning English as a subject and using it as a MOI. On the whole English MOI seemed to counteract most of the students’ overall performance in comparison to other MOI in this study. These findings underscore the criticism towards the use of a foreign language for teaching and learning. Data from the various sources indicated that in order to capitalize on the creativity and capability of students, the use of Kiswahili MOI as stated in sera ya utamaduni would be beneficial.
Drawing from the overall findings and the discussion in the theoretical framework of this study, it is recommended that multilingualism should be the goal as highlighted in the linguistic ecology paradigm. The use of Kiswahili as a MOI could serve as an initial step towards this goal as firm grounding in a familiar language promotes development in other languages. English and other languages could be taught and learnt well as foreign languages.
Source: http://www.uv.uio.no/forsk/disputaser/Vuzosammendrag.html
No comments:
Post a Comment