The Federal Government, particularly the Abia State government, has been advised to consider teaching students with their mother tongue that has been proved to be more effective than foreign language.
An Abian culture activist, Dr Smart Onyekachi Nwokorie, handed down this advice early this week during the 2023 World Cultural Day celebration in Umuahia, stating that teaching with mother tongue has made learning easier and understandable for students in the country.
Nwokorie disclosed that “In my Science/Education programme, we made an experiment. We taught students with Igbo language and we taught the same course for another set of students in English language.
“At the end of the day, we were trying to make a comparative study of academic performances of those taught in their mother tongue and those with English language.
“We discovered that having taught them in Igbo language, they performed better than those taught in English language. That simply means, when we use our indigenous language to teach, we would be able to get better results than when we use foreign language”.
Nwokorie, who is the proprietor of Standard International Secondary School, Umuahia, honoured by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Abia State as Pillar of Culture, regretted the near extinction of Igbo language, stating “The development is not encouraging”.
According to him, “As long as we are alive, we will not allow Igbo language to go into extinction as in every culture, the language is the driver. It is just like a vehicle. When there is no driver, definitely, there is no movement.
“As a matter of fact, we are going to pump in resources in that direction, create awareness, sensitization of parents and make them understand the need for their children to be fluent in vernacular.
He said that the award given to him for his invaluable contributions to cultural norms, tradition, value system of his people and by extension, Igbo land “will sustain what I have been doing on Igbo culture, including N25 million fundraising for 50 farmers in my community”, stating that as a result therefore, many farmers are into yam planting to enable them become full farmers.
“What we are looking at is food security and we will no longer be dependent on imported yams from other areas and we are looking at how people can come from other areas to the south to buy yams”, he said.
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