ROLES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL IMPACT IN NIGERIAN MULTILINGUAL SOCIETY

Abstract

Multilingualism has spread in education for different reasons. It is increasingly common to students whose home languages are not the same as the majority language in their class. School classes are more linguistically diverse than in the past due to the mobility of the population. The spread of multilingualism is also related to the need to learn English as a second or foreign language in non-English speaking countries and to the revival of minority languages in some educational contexts. An all-important decision of language education policy concerns the choice of medium of instruction which determines the language(s) to be learnt, for how much time, etc. Since the 1950s, there have been some important developments in the field of language policy and language planning studies. It began from a rather technical approach to solving language planning problems in predominantly newly independent states where the emphasis was on developing the corpus and status of a new official standard language to be taught in schools. In Nigeria, like many other African nations, multilingualism is a rule, rather than an exemption, the problem of ‘forging ahead’ is of crucial importance. Among the competing languages that scramble for national recognition or official status, whether indigenous or foreign, one must emerge as the official language (the language of administration and education at some levels), the language of relevance, from the competition for the purpose of uniting the nation. Fortunately, English has emerged as that privileged language of its kind. The Nigerian society is irretrievably heterogeneous. Students from diverse ethno-linguistic, cultural and economic groups are exposed quite early to several languages, including their mother tongues and English. Nigerian scholars have variously, as have others examined the connection between multilingualism and interference; we avail ourselves of such studies in situating our reflections.