The influence of teachers and students’ language attitudes towards the use of shona as medium of instruction in secondary schools

Abstract

The article examines the influence of language attitudes of secondary school teachers and students on their choices as to whether Shona can be used as medium of instruction in secondary schools. Language policy in Zimbabwe prescribes (albeit in a non-committal manner) the use of L1 as medium of instruction from Grade one to three. Thereafter, English (L2 for the majority of students) is used exclusively as medium of instruction except in the teaching of other languages. Over the years, debate has been rife regarding the use of indigenous languages as media of instruction at all levels of education. However, advocacy for such innovation has tended to ignore the influence of language attitudes of the clientele of such innovation. This article examined the attitudes of principal users and implementers of language change. The assumption in this article was that for language innovation to succeed, the users (teachers and students) need to hold favourable attitudes towards the intended language policy change and if not, the innovation is likely to suffer from tissue rejection (Obanya, 1987). The findings show that the majority of secondary school teachers and students prefer using English to Shona as medium of instruction. This leads to the conclusion that attitudes of users regarding the proposed language innovation, negatively affect the implementation of the proposed change. Attitudes of teachers, therefore, are keys to successful language innovation in education. Key words: Shona, medium of instruction, language attitudes, former group B schools.