RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTHER TONGUE PREVALENCE AND STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1.1 Introduction

The mother tongue is a mediating tool between students and teachers in language. Teachers are expected to play a leadership role in the classrooms. While monitoring the students who have problems with understanding the language, they can determine in what situations they need to resort to the use of the mother tongue. Mother tongue can be used as a facilitator to make a task meaningful. Thus the students can focus on the task without difficulty. The role of mother tongue in second language acquisition swings in two ways with one school of thought claiming that proficiency in mother tongue is useful in second language learning and another calling it interference influence.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

The use of first language (L1) is beneficial for language learning because it both helps in the process and completion of the task and creates a social and cognitive space in which students will be able to provide each other with assistance throughout the duration of the task (Pan and Pan, 2010).

Adebayo (2008) uses a survey design to examine the influence of mother tongue on performance of English language in Junior School Certificate Examination in Western Nigeria. He found that mother tongue influences the students’ performance in English language in Junior School Certificate Examination in Western Nigeria. He recommends that English language should be used as a medium of communication within and outside the classroom and both teachers and students should endeavor to improve their proficiency level of the language which will eventually lead to improved performance. Adebayo’s study does not explicitly indicate to what extent mother tongue influence the performance; this sought to establish what Adebayo (2008) failed to capture in his study by analyzing the extent to which mother tongue influences performance of English.

Kolawole (2002) also confirmed that students’ performance in English language in secondary schools of Nigeria was very poor. He stressed further that the standard was poor due to a number reasons such as the use of mother tongue; some students do not understand the grammar because their teachers themselves do not know it and in most cases English language teachers in the senior primary and junior secondary schools resort to the use of mother tongue to teach (code switching); they use mother tongue to explain concepts. This might be true to Kenyan case especially in day schools where learners are drawn from a local context of a familiar native language.

Ayodele (1988) and Kolawole (2002) recommend that pupils should have exposure to the English language quite early in primary school irrespective of the perceived advantages of mother tongue. These scholars emphasize on firm foundation in English language for better performance in the subject in future and argue that a solid foundation in English essentially provides students with fundamental skills of English language.

The mother tongue influence on learning English as a foreign language would be overruled. Language is said to be universal. So, these matters are not excluded in the situation of Arabic only, but also in all languages. As a matter of fact, EFL learning lacks the environment which is exercised while learning the first language. Therefore, it has been rightly said that in the learning of the first language, learners are greatly interested and are enclosed by a favorable linguistic setting. This means that learning English as a foreign language has more problems. This resulted in a large number of performance errors in using the foreign language (Onuigbo, 1984).

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Relationship between Mother Tongue Prevalence and Students Performance in English Language.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

Investigation revealed that there is a surge in expansion of secondary schools in the country (Kamano, 2011). Most of the emerging secondary schools are in the rural areas where learners prevalently use mother tongue at home and school; Gatundu district is not an exception. This prevalence of use of mother tongue especially in day secondary schools is an issue of concern since it is a challenge that influences the performance of English (Mwangi, 2009).

Secondary school level is important as it is the transitional stage, during which the youth of ages 14-18 years are prepared to join higher education, training and thereafter the world of work. The value attached to this level of education is reflected in the attention it receives from the government, parents and the general public.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to investigate the Relationship between Mother Tongue Prevalence and Students Performance in English Language. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To examine the prevalence of the use of mother tongue and its effect on student academic performance;
2. To assess the perception of teachers and students on the influence of mother tongue on performance of English Language;
3. To find out the challenges affecting mother tongue among students in the process of learning English Language;
4. To evaluate the measures taken to curb the use of mother tongue in Delta Career College in Warri-South district.

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Are there challenges affecting mother tongue among students in the process of learning English Language?
• What is the prevalence of the use of mother tongue and its effect on student academic performance?
• What is the perception of teachers and students on the influence of mother tongue on performance of English Language?
• What strategies should be used to improve the performance of English?
• What are the measures taken to curb the use of mother tongue in Delta Career College in Warri-South district?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

• H0: There are no significant challenges affecting mother tongue among students in the process of learning English Language
• H1: There are significant challenges affecting mother tongue among students in the process of learning English Language

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1.7 Significance of Study

This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Relationship between Mother Tongue Prevalence and Students Performance in English Language in Delta Career College in Warri-South district.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Operational Definition of Terms

Mother Tongue: Mother tongue is a language which a person acquires in early years and which normally becomes their instrument of thought. In this paper, I am going to consider mother tongue as the language of the catchment area since in the context under study, the vernacular used is also the mother tongue.

Exogenous Language: A language that is foreign to people of a certain country.

First Language: The first language an individual acquires at an early age.

Mother Tongue Education: Mother tongue education is the education which uses a person’s mother tongue as its medium of instruction.

English Teacher: An individual, who teaches, instructs and facilitates the learning of English language.

Code-Switching: Code switching is when a teacher or student speaks in English for a while and then switches to mother tongue for a while and back to English during the teaching-learning process.

Code-mixing: Code mixing is when a teacher or student mix languages during their conversation. Words from the two languages are mixed during conversation.

Second Language: A language that an individual learns or acquires after acquiring the first language.