African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellowships 2009
Adjunct Faculty
University of Ghana
Language Use In Education In Schools In Minority Language Areas - The Case of Logba

The use of mother tongue as the medium of instruction for the first three years in schools in Ghana was the language policy long before independence. However, the challenge faced in minority language areas where a second language rather than a first language is employed as the medium of instruction has not been adequately addressed. This study investigates language use in the classroom in a minority language area, Logba, to ascertain the levels of comprehension of and performance in the lingua franca, Ewe, among the pupils in the first three years of primary school. These findings are compared to the situation of pupils in a monolingual Ewe community in Sokode. The goal is to determine whether the use of the second language is advantageous to the Logba children or not.