TeachingEnglish
Use of a second language or the mother tongue
Submitted by Ajit Singh Nagpal on 5 September, 2008 - 04:36
Why is the use a second language (mother tongue) discouraged when teaching Ebglish? Should it not be made a part of the curicullum especially for 'Beginners' (assuming he/she is not a false beginner) or the Elementary.
For the rural communities in Asia (I do not know about other parts of the world), the mother tongue is the main stay. Most students, if not all, do their primary (some even till the 9th or 10th grade) education in their mother tongue. If this group of students could be given an early exposure to the English language it will make a big difference to them. Then when they come into the cities and go on to graduate and post graduate programmes they will not be so handicapped.
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Hi Ajit,
I think if you are teaching english from 6th or 7th grade then use of mother tongue is necessary.But if you start teaching from elementary then use of mother tongue should be avoided.As use of mother tongue means students will first think in their own language and then translate in english which will affect their fluency in english language and it wont be possible for them to think in english.
In Brazil, most of private and public schools teach English as a second language but in a extra-curricular basis, it means they need to accomplish some activities in English, e.g. written tests every two or three months, but they are not expected to learn it efficiently to be able to speak or do anything else outside school. There is a growing market of billingual schools in the big centres of the country, with a complete different proposal and structure of learning to all subjects. But this is only accessible to a minority of the population, and it is not by far a concern with the students who will someday need it for academic purposes.
I think English is important, but equal importance should be given to the Mother Tongue as well.
You have a valid point when you say students coming from the rural background need to be introduced to the English Language at the primary level itself. The English Language has got a specific structure. Any sentence needs to have the pattern of Subject. the verb and then the object ( direct or indirect ). When students use the mother tongue, they inevitably translate the words verbatim to the English Language which will not make any sense at all.
I am training students down South India over the last four years and I find this is the basic problem which hampers their learning process. The students need to think in English and not in their mother tongue.
Drawing from my experience with this profile, I find qualified engineers who are academically brilliant but lack soft skills. When I start my training, I find the students blank for the first few days. They gradually start picking up the words and settle down. I never encourage the use of mother tongue during the course of training. I make it mandatory to use only the English Language in the class. I also create an atmosphere wherein the student is encouraged to make mistakes. They gradually come to a level wherein the fear of making mistakes is totally done away with. This is the time to smoothly take them through the basics of grammar in an interesting way.
Coming to Singapore, since the mother tongue is used for business communication, people do not feel the necessity to learn the English Language.
I learned the equivalent of 'nest' (ie. "a bird's nest") in Chinese, by direct translation, about 6 years ago: nest = wo
About 8 months ago I was surprised to hear someone saying the equivalent of "a dog's nest". I was so surprised that I even laughed at how silly the speaker was... until I realised, I was the silly one. She didn't even say "a dog's nest", she said "gou wo".
Translation lead me to assume that the two words were (nearly) identical. It turned out that they are very, very different. 'Wo' = some kind of home for birds or animals, that is usually but not always basket shaped, including a pet's basket, a bird's nest, a rabbit's burrow, etc. Whereas 'nest' = a basket shaped home that birds build for themselves in trees.
I feel translation of words, one for one, doesn't help Ss build up their knowledge of language systems (eg. grammar, collocations, fixed expressions, etc) and is often misleading - to the point of feeling extremely silly.
Translation of phrases, expressions, or whole sentences, however, can be extremely helpful.
Learning "Ni hao" = "hello" is extremely useful. Word for word it would be "you good" which makes no sense, and words + grammar (ie. learning 'ni' one day, 'hao' another day, and that in Chinese the pattern is usually subject + verb + object) doesn't help you produce "ni hao" (subject + adjective, against the grammar rules).
Then again, walking into a classroom and saying 'ni hao' several times while waving and greeting Ss might be just as helpful, or maybe more so. ?
The use of mother tongue in teaching of English as a second language is a debatable topic. There is a contradictory view on the place of mother tongue in the teaching of English. “The issue creates a lot of heat than the light."