A growing amount of empirical research and theory on educational development in multilingual contexts emphasises that mother tongue based education will benefit disadvantaged children. For most of the research and literature, led by UNESCO, it is argued that educational success in multilingual nations can only be achieved based on early learning and schooling in the mother tongue. Effective language policy based on mother tongue is crucial to the implementation of the educational system of any multilingual country, including Nigeria the case study, where the home and school languages are mainly uncoordinated. It also confirms that fluency and literacy in the mother tongue establish a cognitive and linguistic foundation for learning additional languages. Both the theoretical and empirical research agree that in order to drastically challenge the educational disadvantages and to be fair to various multi-ethnic groups, national education policy must promote multilingualism in the education system. This PhD thesis explores attitudes of Nigerian young people towards their mother tongue and English, in the context of Nigerian language and education policies. It describes the sociolinguistic realities of Nigeria and its language policy and planning situation, relating them to language use and attitudes among young people. It also aims to identify the role language plays in the widespread phenomenon of pupils who drop out of secondary education and pupils' attitudes towards the medium of instruction. These aims were supported by a language attitudes survey and fieldwork; where data were collected to study the attitudes of different young people, both secondary school pupils and school dropouts towards mother tongue and English, and to investigate differences in their language choice and use patterns. Findings from this research substantiate that mother tongue language policy within education can foster positive attitudes; they also confirm that there are attitudinal differences between certain groups of young people.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:589500 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Orekan, George Suraju |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=202789 |
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