The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi
WHILE it is honourable and prudent to do everything so that our children can learn indigenous languages and foreign languages, via transforming the national curriculum or other edupolitical technocracy, let no one deceive us to overlook the pole position of English Language in education.
All doctors, engineers and professors of all shapes and sizes, and other academic gods and goddesses in the world, including motherland-Zimbabwe, got where they are now through reading. All education….meaningful education, is about reading and nothing else – reading, reading, reading and then reading! Of course you will have to prove what you have read through writing!
And almost all the reading and writing there is to do in a school set up is in English. The higher the level of English Language mastery of course the higher the level of comprehension of what is being studied-Science, Geography, Theology, Politics, Philosophy, whatever it is!
My experience as a teacher of both English language and Literature in English spans over a period more than thirty years now, including my current career path of independent consultancy in the teaching and learning of English Language and Literature.
That vast experience tells me that there is nothing that beats the wisdom of cultivating a strong English language background in our children: Catching them young! Excuse me for the boring cliché.
Children need to be taught the mysteries of concord agreement (tenses), threading of simple and complex sentences, spelling of difficult or confusing words, (there are hundreds of them in the English Language), proper pronunciation of words like ‘hat / hut/ hate/ hurt.’ Cf bad / bed /bird…many more that sound the same yet must not and are spelt differently.
Our children assimilate a lot of errors in their writing and speech (common errors) most of them caused by malapropism (error of confusing words because they sound the same—persecute/ execute/ prosecute.) The most common and most notorious are errors caused by mother-tongue interference: Eating money, instead of spending it/ returning back instead of simply returning/ washing the body instead of bathing or taking a shower/ eating rice with beef instead of eating rice and beef/travelling with a bus instead of travelling by bus/ married by Mr Mtisi instead of married to Mr Mtisi / I am missing my book instead of my book is missing / I saw it with my own eyes instead of simply saying ‘I saw it.’ / I heard it with my own ears instead of ‘I heard it.” Zvegazvega!
This is awful repetition. Can’t you see? Perfect emphatic Shona! But not anything resembling English. There is an exhaustible list of these Shonglish expressions our children learn directly and indirectly from all people around them: parents, siblings, even their teachers.
ECD and Primary schools need serious language detoxification lessons; cleansing of children’s vocabulary or communication chambers; purification processes masterminded, designed and administered by experts.
Teachers or school owners and heads that understand this advice and want to step up their ECD and or Primary school English must not wait. Please contact me using details provided at the end of this advice so that together we network for organized purpose.
Yes, let us allow our children to learn indigenous languages, French and Portuguese etc. But lest we forget! If our children’s English is purposefully and skillfully developed at ECD and Primary school, their secondary and high school education is automatically made easier. Children whose literacy in English is low at ECD and Primary school will definitely struggle at higher levels of learning. The learning tool called English must be competently taught at preparatory stages to ensure future learning competencies. This is a truth you can ignore at the peril of your child’s education.
Contact Morris Mtisi(private consultant in the teaching and learning of English Language and Literature) at The Manica Post and DiamondFM Radio in person or call and WhatsAPP on 0773 883 293 or email [email protected] for assistance.
