IMPACT OF MOTHER TONGUE ON CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF STUDENTS AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL IN GUJRAT

Abstract

Mother tongue plays a central and incomparable role in the development of young learners in terms of cognition, emotion, as well as cultural. Although this theoretically strong situation applies, most Pakistani elementary government schools still use a propagated medium of instruction, in which most students do not speak the language, namely a language either Urdu or English that does not specifically serve as a mother-tongue of many students, especially in linguistically homogeneous groups (such as Gujrat district, where Punjabi is spoken mainly as a mother-tongue). This lack of connection between the language used at home and the language used at school has been theorised extensively to serve as a barrier to conceptual learning, as well as academic self-confidence and meaningful learning in young students. This paper is a quantitative, descriptive research study which aims to compare the effects of mother tongue with the idea of conceptual knowledge among female learners of Grade 7 and Grade 8 in government elementary schools in Tehsil Gujrat, Punjab, Pakistan. The research is confined to 10 randomly chosen elementary schools of government girls among the 60 schools running in the tehsils. One hundred and fifty students (15 students each school) are chosen by being sampled out. A 20-item Yes/No questionnaire (nominal data scale) designed by the researchers is used to gather the data on a 4-domain insight of students perceptions regarding cognitive and intellectual knowledge, cultural and emotional identity, academic confidence and comfort, and learning outcomes. Data analysis using SPSS makes use of frequency counts, percentages, as well as chi-square analysis. The anticipated result suggests that most students find the mother tongue teaching to be very helpful in the conceptual level, emotional safety, academic and the general learning results of the elementary level. The paper ends with specific suggestions of policy regarding language-in-education, teacher education and curriculum reform in Gujrat and in Punjab in general.