Baccalauréat · Série A · Anglais — 2024

Text: The language of the classroom

On her first day at school, Salamata was six years old. She could count to twenty, name every tree around her compound and tell three stories she had learned from her grandmother. But on that morning, none of it counted. The teacher spoke a language she had never heard at home.

For two years she said almost nothing. Her reports described her as « slow ». Then a new programme arrived in the village: pupils would begin reading in their mother tongue, and French would be introduced gradually afterwards. Within a few months, Salamata was reading aloud. Two years later, her French was better than that of the pupils who had started with French only.

Her case is not exceptional. Researchers who followed such programmes across West Africa found the same pattern: children who first learn to read in a language they already speak do not fall behind. They catch up faster, because they are not learning two difficult things at the same time.

The obstacle is rarely scientific. It is practical, and sometimes political. Teaching in twenty languages requires textbooks, trained teachers and money. It also requires parents to believe that their own language belongs in a classroom — a belief that a century of schooling has quietly discouraged.

Salamata is now a teacher herself. In her class, the first books the children open are in the language their mothers sing to them.

Text written for this examination.

Topic

« It also requires parents to believe that their own language belongs in a classroom. »

Should African schools teach in national languages, or only in French and English? Write an essay of 20 to 25 lines giving your opinion and supporting it with arguments and examples.