The Future of Education
Early Childhood Education: The Role of the Mother Tongue in Foreign or Second Language Acquisition
Nicole Mafouma, University of Dschang (Cameroon)
Abstract
The mother tongue or first tongue is a veritable springboard into the world of second or foreign Ianguage learning and acquisition. Experience in language teaching and learning shows that children who already speak their mother tongue already have a famework against which subsequent language
Iearning and acquisition is easily done. The lexico-semantic and grammatical structures of a particular mother tongue helps the learner of a second or foreign language to easily catch, say the idiomatic renderings of another language. Language teachers in primary and especially junior secondary levet in
Cameroon have been unanimous in conceding that pupils and students who have little or no knowledge of their mother language find it harder to express themselves correctly and lucidly in English or French than those who already spoke their mother tongues. This study aims at scientifically proving the positive role which the mother tongue orfirst language plays in facilitating proficiency in
another language.
Keywords: first language, framework, lexicon semantic-structures, proficiency, smattering.
