ABSTRACT
In Nigeria, there is often mass failure in the results of state and national examinations. This poor outcome could be attributed to many factors, but the bigger problem is that of language. Right from the elementary school level, many pupils are taught by teachers who themselves need to read basic textbooks of English. Policies made to address and improve on the issue have achieved little. Therefore, this chapter focuses on examining existing policies and proffering a suitable model applicable to the Nigerian academic situation. The maintenance bilingual education model was adopted. In an experiment from the language acquisition standpoint, resulting in the writing of this chapter, ten children ages 3:0-9:0 were presented objects and given the names of these objects in both Yoruba (their indigenous language) and English. The experiment also involved fifty randomly selected secondary school students. All respondents lived in Ilorin metropolis. The outcome of the task was subjected to statistical analysis. Linguistic knowledge and linguistic input influence children's category judgments, and these influence their feature differentiation as well as their language-related production, which in this case is their education. The conclusion is that an encouragement to learn in an indigenous language alongside English shows ultimate bilingualism.
