SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF TAMILNADU

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) – 2005 strongly advocates multilingualism in school education. This confers definite cognitive advantages. The NCF – 2005 provides the following guidelines for language education in schools:

• Language teaching needs to be multilingual not only in terms of the number of languages offered to children but also in terms of evolving strategies that would use the multilingual classroom as a resource.
• Home language(s) of children should be the medium of learning in schools.
• If a school does not have provision for teaching in the children’s home language(s) at the higher levels, primary school education must still be covered through the home language(s). It is imperative that we honour the child’s home language(s).

The post-colonial period witnessed an increasing emphasis on using mother tongue as the medium of instruction and UNESCO‘s (as cited in Agnihotri and Khanna, 1997, p.33) recommendation that psychologically, socially and educationally a child learns better and faster through their mother tongue, was quoted by many language planning authorities everywhere. As a matter of fact, after independence, our language teaching policy has consistently advocated the teaching of mother tongue at the primary school level. Our main stream education envisages mother tongue as the medium of instruction. The ‘three language formula’ advocated the teaching of a) mother tongue, b) one other modern Indian language, and c) one international language, mainly at the secondary school level. HRD minister Kapil Sibal restated the policy:

We need our children to learn mother tongue, Hindi and English – mother tongue for better understanding of the subjects at elementary stage. Hindi at secondary stage for integrating to national level and English at university level for connecting to the world (Indian Express, 14 September 2009, as cited in Graddol, 2010, p.83).