Mother tongue instruction and academic achievement of pupils in nursery schools

Oribabor O.A and Adesina, A.D.

Abstract

The study was carried out to ascertain if mother tongue instruction will facilitate the learning of Social Studies and English language concepts among Nursery School children. The design was a pretest posttest control group design. The sample comprises of 249 Nursery School pupils from Nursery Schools in Ile-Ife. The pupils were grouped into three namely A. B and C. The groups were presented different learning packages. A pretest on selected concepts was administered on the students in the first week while teaching took place using English language and Yoruba for groups A and B respectively’ in the second week, A posttest was administered on the students in the fourth week. The data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics. The result showed that the mother tongue instruction aided learning better than English Language as a medium of instruction. It was therefore concluded that teachers should be encouraged to make use of mother-tongue instruction while teaching in nursery classes.