The language dynamics in schools

The language situation in schools today baffles me. Many students fail to perfect any of the languages that they study at school. Most schools teach English, Kinyarwanda and French and one would assume that our students leave high school when they are proficient in all of them. This is not always the case given the different attitudes that learners have towards the three subjects. Students who come from elite families where English is commonly spoken at home think that they know it all and they do not participate actively in class discussions during English lessons. They fail to realise that the English they speak is full of slangs and it is unacceptable in formal situations and that is why they have to be taught the standard form. Interestingly, such students concentrate more on fine tuning their accent to match that of the British or the Americans. In the process, they end up mispronouncing certain words and their intended message is distorted. Teachers of English have an uphill task of making such learners realise that accent alone does not reflect one’s proficiency in English. Otherwise, the native speakers of English from Britain, United States of America, Australia and Canada would not bother learning the language at school since it is their mother tongue. The students who are Francophone speak French most of the time and some of them reach an extent of speaking it during English lessons. I always get puzzled when I give learners certain tasks to perform in groups and I hear some of them speak French. They cannot perfect in English by practicing speaking French in English lessons and vice versa. The colleagues who teach Kinyarwanda are not spared either. They also face a big challenge whereby some students shun the subject on grounds that they already know the language and it is therefore wastage of time for them to study it at school. They do not know that the form of Kinyarwanda that they speak with their peers has lots of slangs that do not conform to the rules of the language. They cannot even write it correctly. Many of the students who come from rich families have a negative attitude towards the subject. They do not realize its relevance to them and the nation. Such fellows consider themselves as modern students who should not study local languages and they fail to realize that local languages define who we are and they help a lot in the promotion and preservation of our cultural values. Therefore, we should feel proud of our local languages since they give us a sense of identity. There is need for school administrators and language teachers to reach a common understanding on how to effectively handle the issue of languages. English Language is the medium of instruction in schools and this implies that it is the language that students are supposed to use when studying the subjects on the curriculum apart from Kinyarwanda and French. Even when they are out of class they should be encouraged to speak English in order to perfect in it. The students should speak French only when learning it in class and they should speak Kinyarwanda during Kinyarwanda lessons. They should be discouraged from mixing up languages in the classroom as this leads to failure to master any of them. Learners should realize that no single language is superior to the others and they should endeavour to give equal attention to the three languages in terms of language-specific class activities. Language teachers should help the learners to become proficient in the three languages by putting emphasis on developing the four major language skills which include speaking, listening, reading and writing. This will help students to acquire communicative competence which is vital in the field of work. The writer is a teacher of English Language and Literature.