BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Making Practical Language Recommendations for Introducing Literacy in The Gambia: challenges and solutions

Mon, March 11, 4:45 to 6:15pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Terrace Level, Gardenia C

Proposal

The Gambia has introduced the teaching of literacy through the medium of seven national languages into its Lower Basic Schools (up to Grade 3) over the last 12 years. As most children arrive at school with very little or no English, the main medium of instruction, the goal is to improve literacy outcomes by teaching the children through a language which they already speak. English, the former colonial language, is used as the medium of instruction for all other subjects. One of the complicating factors in the implementation of this policy is knowing which language(s) to use in which schools. This is because The Gambia’s sociolinguistic profile is very complex, as no one language serves as a Language of Wider Communication, and because the three most-spoken languages - Mandinka, Olof and Pulaar - are all widely distributed across the majority of the country. Adjacent villages often have different language practices, and there are high levels of intermarriage between people of different language backgrounds, resulting in complex patterns of multilingual communication.
The project described in this paper addressed this knowledge gap, by mapping language use in every government and grant-aided Lower Basic school in the nation (617 schools were surveyed). The overall goal is to identify the language(s) that children are the most comfortable in, for each school. As such, the methodology was focused on what languages children are using among themselves (and the languages that teachers would use in explaining concepts to the children), rather than mainly asking direct questions about language, which can generate answers based on ethnicity, or home language, which do not necessarily represent the children’s optimal linguistic competence. Identifying the language(s) that children use in school should also ideally reduce the number of languages needed for effective literacy instruction in each school, leading to easier implementation, and therefore success of the program. In as many cases as possible, we sought to identify one language to be used per school, but did find many schools where not all children could speak one language, and so made recommendations for the use of more than one language for the teaching of literacy in 27% of schools.
The primary methodology used was the direct observation of children’s linguistic behavior, coupled with observation of classroom language practices, interviews with teachers, head teachers, parents and educational officials, along with testing children’s oral comprehension of up to two languages. As such we developed an in-depth picture of language use in each school, as well as collecting data on attitudes towards the national-language program, and issues with its implementation, such as availability of materials and training.
The research found that all seven of the languages for which a program has been developed were the dominant language in some schools in the country, ranging from two schools for Manjaku to 239 for Mandinka. Overall, the big three languages - Mandinka, Olof and Pulaar, are the dominant languages in 90% of the schools, while adding the next two biggest languages (Jola and Sarahulleh) brings this proportion up to 98.2% of schools. Recommendations for the languages to be used in every school have been made, with some latitude (e.g. mentioning when there is a large group of children who speak another language, which could be used, but does not need to be for all to understand well). We also found that the primary response from teachers and other stakeholders to the program was positive, while most teachers felt that they needed more training in teaching through national languages.

Authors