`Kiswahili ideal medium of instruction for local schools`
by Joseph Mchekadona
Former Member of Parliament for Kalenga George Mlawa has said for the education standard in the country to improve, the government must adopt Kiswahili language, as a medium of instruction in secondary schools.
He said during the Form Six graduation ceremony held at Ghomme Secondary School in Dar es Salaam recently that, using English, as a medium of instruction has proved failure due to the fact that many secondary students fail to understand the language.
Mlawa said the English language problem is very big especially among students joining secondary schools in each particular year. “A student from Kiswahili speaking primary school joining Form One and getting introduced to Biology, Physics and Chemistry taught in English is cumbersome. Do you think this student will be able to understand any thing?” he queried.
He argued that many students joining secondary schools find it very hard to learn in English, which is a foreign language to them; as a result, they tend to lose the interest in studies.
Additionally, he said, most English teachers did not receive good training on how to teach the language; therefore it was extremely difficult for them to help the students learn the foreign language effectively.
The former MP said the country should do away with a wrong belief that the level of education is measured by the number of people who can speak or master English very well.
However, he said that if the government was not ready to let English go, it should consider introducing English as a medium of instruction right from primary schools so that pupils could get used to the language from early stages of their learning.
The Guardian (Tanzania) 21.2.2011
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