The District Director of Education for Kadjebi Akan in the Oti Region, Deh Seyram Seth has urged parents to cultivate the habit of speaking more local language with their children at home.
He said the ability of a child to speak and understand the local language will help him or her to better understands the cultural environment which to a large extent contributes to the child’s fluency in the English language.
Speaking at International Mother Language Day at Kadjebi Senior High School under the theme: ‘To set goals for preserving endangered languages, promoting multilingualism, and sustaining linguistic heritage’, the Director of Education noted that, languages are the vessels of history, cultural identity and in a world where linguistic diversity is at risk.
According to him, preserving endangered languages is not merely a duty, but an investment in the richness of human expression, commitment to the stories, wisdom, and unique perspective embedded in each language.
He said once a child could fluently speak any of the local languages, it becomes easier for that child’s tongue to twist well to all the twenty-six alphabets, thus making it easy for the child to learn the English language.
Mr. Deh Seyram urged parents to let the teachers cater for the child’s English language fluency and proficiency and teach them the local language at home.
A debate competition was organized by World Vision Ghana between Ahamasu Islamic SHS, Bueman SHS, Dodi Papasi Senior High Technical School, and Kadjebi Akan SHS to contribute to the noble cause of preserving multilingualism and linguistic heritage.
The Project Officer-Reading Improvement and Skills Enhancement of Kadjebi World Vision Programme, Kennedy Amponsah-Cheremeh, said multilingual education not only enhances learning outcomes but also promotes social cohesion and a mutual understanding among diverse communities.
He said reading is undoubtedly the next big skill the world requires but reading with comprehension will just be the success of the next generation of nation builders.
Speaking in an interview with Adom News, Mr. Amponsah-Cheremeh said World Vision has signed onto the Sustainable Development Goal 4(SDG) which is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
He noted that the ultimate goal of the education project is to improve access to and also ensure the quality of education for both boys and girls in basic schools.
He said for the past three years, World Vision has donated 2240,900 copies of mother language books to set up book banks mini-libraries for children in 320 schools communities across Ghana, including the Kadjebi district.
Mr. Amponsah-Cheremeh therefore appealed to the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education to train more teachers in multilingual languages to improve proficiency in the English language.