ABSTRACT
The provision of quality education involves the fulfilment of a number of factors, but without doubt, the language of instruction is the key to communication and understanding in the classroom. Evidence from research suggests that teaching in a child’s first language offers the best chances of educational success (Heugh, 2002). In addition to educational attainment, there have been linguistic, psychological, socio-political, historical and civil rights arguments made in support of this contention (UNESCO, 2001). Language-in-education policies that
do not adequately consider the student’s first language have been linked to both poor performance and total exclusion from education (Pinnock, 2009). Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) has referred to instruction through the medium of a foreign/second language as ‘submersion’ as it is comparable to holding the learners under water without teaching them to swim. Studies have shown how the provision of education in a language other than one’s own has caused problems that relate to pedagogy (Kyeune, 2003), the acquisition of content knowledge (Tollefson & Tsui, 2004) and the level of motivation of students (Salili & Tsui, 2005). Benson (2004) states that it can be especially problematic when the medium of instruction (MOI) is a language that is foreign to both the students and the teacher. Nevertheless, policy-makers recognise that English is the lingua franca of the world and the acquisition of English is a paramount priority if national education systems are to prepare their young people for a globalised world. This need to keep up with the increasing spread of English as the world language has resulted in the prevalence of English as an MOI in many education systems across the world (Coleman, 2006; Tollefson & Tsui, 2004). In the Asian context, in particular, English plays a dominant role in language-in-education policies with government and societal forces operating on the basis that proficiency in English is the key to educational success at school (Baldauf, Kaplan, Kamwangamalu, & Bryant, 2011; Tsui & Tollefson, 2007).
