ABSTRACT:
It is natural that the problem of literacy should be most acute in multilingual societies, and especially where to some extent the spoken languages have not been transcribed. Information and statistics are, however, so deficient in this field that the relationship between illiteracy and language distribution is largely a matter of conjecture. The symbiotic relationship that exists between human language and culture, more so in a society in which there still is very strong and robust language loyalty, is one of the givens in sociolinguistic discourse. Essentially. a mentafact and a sociofact created by particular people living in a particular geo-political society at particular periods in history for intra-group communication purposes, human language is a mirror and the marker of self-image, cultural and group identity. Thus, the effectiveness of a language focuses on teachers' language and methodological knowledge or skills e.g. Rivers1972, Shulman1994, Woods 1996 and others concentrate on personality while Bridges1993, Prodromou 1998, and Ur 1997 are rather concerned with factors like intelligence, self-awareness and rapport. The spreading of a tool depends partly on the usefulness and efficiency of the tool, partly on various historical, social and individual mentality.
In this paper, an attempt shall be made to take a look at the language policy in Nigeria, the attitudes of Nigerians to foreign and indigenous languages, i.e. Edo language, the theory of language planning and solutions to the problem. |
