ATTITUDE AND PERCEPTION OF TEACHERS ON THE USE OF MOTHER TONGUE IN ESL CLASSROOM IN CAMEROON

Abstract

Education in the local languages can be one of the means for improving the living conditions of the disadvantaged rural population. The obstacle to Education remains the use of foreign languages for teaching and learning in the early years of primary education. The advent of independence was considered the gateway to complete eradication of the colonial past. On contrary, colonial teaching practices, involving the use of foreign languages, continue to dominate the classrooms. This article revisits the issue of language of instruction in the early years of primary schools in Bafut after many years of mother tongue education implementation. It examines the effect of using English, a foreign language in teaching indigenous Bafut children, in the suburbs who do not have the opportunity to acquire English to the level necessary for effective engagement with the curriculum. The study investigates the opinions and attitude of primary school teachers toward teaching using an indigenous language (Bafut). The researcher used triangulation, involving a variety of data sources including classroom observation, interview, focus group discussion and documentation. Data was collected from twenty four primary school teachers from six purposively selected primary schools in Bafut. The findings revealed attitudinal barriers to using the mother tongue as language of instruction in early years of education. After many years of sensitization, and many admirable polices developed throughout Africa, the efficiency of their implementation is questionable. English and French continue to receive exclusive attention in the classroom as the language of instruction and examinations, whereas the role of Mother Tongue has remained undefined. This had yielded ample evidence to question current practices and suggest the need to adopt new approaches in language use in education.