Investing in bilingual education can reduce repetition and dropout and improve literacy outcomes.
In countries where more than one language is spoken, education systems face the challenge of choosing the language of instruction in schools.
Learning a new language is a particularly difficult task for a child. On the other hand, learning in a language that a child already speaks can facilitate schooling and literacy.
In multilingual communities, a common approach is to opt for bilingual education, where teaching takes place in both the mother tongue and an official language. There is ample evidence that early experience of both languages with bilingual family members or at school as part of a bilingual education program can improve children's oral language skills.
These skills – vocabulary and knowledge of the sounds of a language – provide insight into children's early reading skills. This evidence was provided in Sub-Saharan Africa et beyond.
However, we wanted to know more about how linguistic environments at home and at school promote reading ability in multilingual communities with low literacy rates, as is the case in areas rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire. Our aim was to understand whether bilingual environments at home and at school could promote children's language and reading skills and the factors that could influence, in such contexts, their reading and writing achievement. .
We have carried out recherches in Côte d'Ivoire from 2016 to 2018. There are more than 70 languages spoken in this country, but French remains the language of instruction in most primary classes. The results are mediocre: only 53% young people aged 15 to 24 are literate. We assessed the children's language and reading skills in both their mother tongue and in French, and compared the results obtained by children attending a French-only school and those in a bilingual establishment, who grew up in monolingual or bilingual homes.
We found, as expected, that children from bilingual homes had better language and reading skills than their monolingual peers. But, unexpectedly, children from French-only schools performed better in language and writing tests, apparently because of the resources available to them in those schools. Thus, efforts to use multiple languages in education must also be accompanied by better quality resources such as teacher training and teaching materials in mother tongues.
Research
Most rural households in Côte d'Ivoire do not speak French, so many children only come into contact with the French language for the first time when they start school. This discrepancy between the language spoken at home and the language used at school may contribute to the fact that 10% schoolchildren repeat a grade, that only 73% of children finish the primary cycle, and that only 53% of people aged 15 to 24 are literate.
In 2001, Côte d'Ivoire launched a nationwide program called the Integrated School Project which provides for the teaching of a mother tongue in addition to French.
Our team up research investigated how children's speaking and reading skills differed by family and school status in multilingual rural communities with low literacy rates. We analyzed the differences between:
- bilingual (mother tongue and French) and monolingual (mother tongue only) households and
- bilingual schools in the Integrated School Project program and traditional French-language schools only.
We have évalué the oral expression of 830 children in their mother tongue (Abidji, Attie, Baoulè, Bètè) and in French, and then tested their French reading skills.
As expected, based on recherches previous studies linking early bilingual experience to strengths in language and reading skills, children from bilingual homes outperformed their peers from monolingual homes speaking only their mother tongue in both languages on all language and reading tests.
But, it was not so evident in the school results. Children in bilingual schools repeated a year less often than those in French-only schools. This suggests that teaching in the mother tongue may have helped them better assimilate the school curriculum. Overall, however, children in bilingual schools performed less well in language and reading tests in both languages than children in traditional French-only schools.
This result was the opposite of what one would expect from previous research on bilingual education.
This result may have reflected the qualitative differences in the education children received in these two types of schools. These quality differences were related to the use of mother tongues in bilingual classes. Teachers did not have sufficient training or didactic materials to teach in mother tongues. French-language schools have not encountered the same difficulties, as their teachers are trained in teaching French and have enough teaching materials in this language.
Teachers in bilingual schools encountered obstacles that limited their ability to provide quality bilingual education. They had to deal with the perception in their communities that the mother tongue was not an effective learning tool. As one CM1 teacher from the village of Moapè told us, adequate resources to teach in mother tongues were lacking:
We have no pedagogical orientation for teaching in the local language. I have to prepare the lessons and copy each exercise by hand into the 40 student notebooks in my class… I prefer to give my lessons in French… In addition, we were not originally trained in bilingual teaching. A class is allocated to us according to our ethnicity and not for our mastery of the techniques of the language of instruction.
Due to these constraints on the quality of bilingual education, it is possible that the early reading and writing skills of some schoolchildren may not have been able to develop. It is therefore not enough to put in place a bilingual education program to hope that learning and literacy outcomes will improve. Education systems should invest in bilingual education programs to ensure teachers have the resources to deliver quality bilingual education.
Perspectives
Bilingual education is worth investing in. It reduces the rates of repeating et dropout, and improves literacy outcomes. Incorporating a child's mother tongue into their education enhances their culture and can improve their academic performance and increase their confidence in themselves and their self esteem. Improving the quality of bilingual education can also convince communities of its value and change negative perceptions of mother tongue education.
While recognizing the need to improve the quality and results of bilingual education programs, Côte d'Ivoire has adopted the program of the International Organization of La Francophonie, School and National Languages in Africa (ELAN), which aims for better bilingual education. Monitoring quality improvement will be an important key to the success of schools.
Mary Claire Ball, PhD student, Psychology of development and education, University of Toronto and Kaja Jasinska, Assistant Professor, Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.