Multilingual Education: An Emerging Threat to Quality English Education in Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

In 1994, Ethiopian constitutions underwent an amendment in which each regional state was given a right to choose, use, and diffuse its language from both cultural and educational perspectives. This amendment marked the welcoming sign of multilingual education in Ethiopia, but the current pattern of multilingual education has caused more harm than good to the end users (students) in terms of learning and mastering English language to an optimal level. The paper hypothesizes that multilingual education is one of the determinants for impairing the quality of English education in Eastern Ethiopia. So this research took the shape of an ethnographic perception-study not only to explore the adverse impacts of multilingual education on the quality of English education but also to seek mass views on reversing the current trend of multilingual (trilingual) education from (Mother Tongue + Amharic + English) to (English + Amharic + Mother Tongue) as a remedy. In this pursuit, 150 participants comprising 50 students, 50 teachers, and 50 government employees were selected using convenience sampling. The data were collected through unstructured interview and participant observation; whereas, the analysis of the data was made through analytic induction and percentile. As a part of findings, the paper presents six adverse impacts of multilingual education on English Education; and the participants’ varied degree of consent on reversing the current pattern of trilingual education. The paper finally forwards apposite recommendations to streamline English in mainstream education to enhance the quality of English education.