Mother-tongue education: a literature review and proposed research design

Abstract

The relative merits of a child receiving instruction in its mother tongue has always generated a considerable amount of interest among educationalists and psycholinguists. Educationalists have always assumed that it is cognitively and emotionally advantageous for a child to receive early instruction in its mother tongue. With this article I seek to argue that although the argument is plausible, the psycholinguistic evidence in support of the argument is not as conclusive as some people would like to believe because the empirical studies investigating the issue were neither carefully designed nor executed. This article is concluded by providing an outline of a research design which might overcome some of the weaknesses of previous research on investigations into the effects of mother-tongue education in early primary education.