What a country? Are we going backwards rather than forward? Reinstate the Ordinary and Advance level school system and at least our students will be able to read and write and can comprehend but this local dialects crap shoul ... read full comment
What a country? Are we going backwards rather than forward? Reinstate the Ordinary and Advance level school system and at least our students will be able to read and write and can comprehend but this local dialects crap shouldn't be even brought up. We are useless with our local dialects
MARCUS AMPADU 8 years ago
Mr. Kaakamotobi you are dead wrong for saying that " Ghana is a country of backward people". For your information we are known the world over as smart people.
In my opinion, what is happening to our education system nowad ... read full comment
Mr. Kaakamotobi you are dead wrong for saying that " Ghana is a country of backward people". For your information we are known the world over as smart people.
In my opinion, what is happening to our education system nowadays can be attributed to the fallen standards of our those who teach our children. They have lost their commitment and passion.
The nation needs to put more resources into teacher training colleges.
Whatever 8 years ago
The essence of switching back to our local language is to help develop our local language starting from the school. The addition of vocabulary is how you develop your local language so that vocabulary will permeate through so ... read full comment
The essence of switching back to our local language is to help develop our local language starting from the school. The addition of vocabulary is how you develop your local language so that vocabulary will permeate through society... and industries and society will also catch it and develop their own local terminologies that will be send back to school. And this exchanges leads to enrichment of local language locally. And if in the process, we invent something using the local language and that thing has a universal use, it goes global, your local language will go global and before you know it, it has become and international language. That also has it benefits of feeding into our local language with new words from outside. That is how languages develop. English, French etc all went through the same cycle. This is not rocket science. Relational thinking are thoughts whose conception will be intentional. It not is natural. Language must emerge from sub-consciousness, not consciousness.
OYOKOBA 8 years ago
I agree with you totally, "Whatever". The arguments by Seshie are flawed in many places. He argues as though the English or Eurocentric languages had all the scientific words he is worried about in place before they even knew ... read full comment
I agree with you totally, "Whatever". The arguments by Seshie are flawed in many places. He argues as though the English or Eurocentric languages had all the scientific words he is worried about in place before they even knew what scientific or technical terms were. Languages all over the world develop words to cover new trends and ideations, a case in point is "dumsor" which has made its way into English lexicon in a round about way.
I happened to be looking up recently a Malaysian literature - the medium of instruction is the Malay language which has replaced English - and I quickly realized that where they do not have a Malay equivalent of an English word they just used the English vocabulary and the rest of the sentence is just in Malay. So to cite your example, Thermodynamics could have been just one word followed by a long string of Ewe or Twi language, just like korshiokor also made its way into the English language.
The ideal thing will have been where a kid will be taught in the predominant language of the area he goes to school to enable them get a grip of the fundational concepts in math, science, and the arts. In Ghana each of the regions have a predominant language that is understood by almost all the indigenes in that region. We can instruct the kids in those languages. In the 4th year English and one other native language outside their mothers' linguistic block or group can be added so that on average every Ghanaian can speak at least 3 languages fluently, being their mothers' tongue, English language and one other Ghanain language outside their mother's tongue to force national unity. Dialects that belong to the same linguistic group such as Twi and Fanti or Ga and Adangbe will not count as two different languages.
Stanley Seshie 8 years ago
"Whatever", your comments hardly reveals any flaws in my piece, in which I focused on the indispensable role of the educational system in education, and for that matter how it is indepedent from the language of instruction.
... read full comment
"Whatever", your comments hardly reveals any flaws in my piece, in which I focused on the indispensable role of the educational system in education, and for that matter how it is indepedent from the language of instruction.
Whilst I had not downplayed the importance of education in the mother-tongue, I pointed out how we seem to be doing almost nothing in translating or adopting some pervasive terminologies across the spectrum of bodies of organised knowledge in order to enhance learning and teaching in our local language.
What a country? Are we going backwards rather than forward? Reinstate the Ordinary and Advance level school system and at least our students will be able to read and write and can comprehend but this local dialects crap shoul ...
read full comment
Mr. Kaakamotobi you are dead wrong for saying that " Ghana is a country of backward people". For your information we are known the world over as smart people.
In my opinion, what is happening to our education system nowad ...
read full comment
The essence of switching back to our local language is to help develop our local language starting from the school. The addition of vocabulary is how you develop your local language so that vocabulary will permeate through so ...
read full comment
I agree with you totally, "Whatever". The arguments by Seshie are flawed in many places. He argues as though the English or Eurocentric languages had all the scientific words he is worried about in place before they even knew ...
read full comment
"Whatever", your comments hardly reveals any flaws in my piece, in which I focused on the indispensable role of the educational system in education, and for that matter how it is indepedent from the language of instruction.
...
read full comment