[MLE] Is 3 years enough? Research findings from Cameroon

Dear  Multilingual Education friends,

Is three years of mother tongue medium education long enough? There is a report (“The Kom Experimental Mother Tongue Education Pilot Project. Report for 2012,” by Stephen L. Walter and Kain Godfrey Chuo) on the Kom Pilot project in Cameron where children from 12 different schools were educated in their mother tongue, Kom, for three years and joined the main stream school grade 4 onwards. The research compares these students with their comparison group with English medium education while they are grade 3, 4, and 5. Here I quote some of their main findings and suggestions.

1. The three year period of the intervention is not long enough to adequately prepare students for an effective transition to L2 instruction. (Note: Those who have been in English-only schools for all 5 years are even less prepared for the demands of Class 5 than are the children from experimental schools.)
2. The students coming from the experimental schools still show in Class 5 some of the educational benefits derived from having been in the experimental program.”
   

To access to the full report, click here with control key: http://www.mlenetwork.org/sites/default/files/The%20Kom%20MLE%20Project%202012.pdf

Regards,
Karsten

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Karsten van Riezen
Education Consultant, LinkedIn Profile
SIL International, South Asia Group

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