Language, Literature and Education: Research Updates Vol. 11

Zambia is a multilingual, multi-ethnic state whose sociolinguistic landscape has been shaped to a large extent by historical factors of migration and colonialism. Through the application of Ruiz’s three language orientation theories, the authors analyse language teaching and learning from the standpoint of language as a right, language as a problem and language as a resource. This chapter investigates the challenges that teachers face while employing Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) strategies in Primary schools in Chongwe District in Zambia. The study adopted a descriptive research design with a qualitative research approach. Descriptive research design is a systematic methodology which describes the features of a population, event, or phenomenon. It answers “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” questions. A descriptive research design does not examine causation but presents facts about existing conditions in detail. Using a purposive sampling technique, a sample size of 30 teachers (three from each of the ten schools) was selected, where Focus Group Discussions, document analysis and classroom observation were employed to gather the data. The analysis demonstrates that significant challenges are found to have been faced by teachers when applying MTB-MLE, including inadequate materials, concepts that are too difficult to be interpreted into the mother tongue, time-consuming and a high teacher-pupil ratio. Furthermore, the research highlights the importance of utilising MTB-MLE in multilingual classrooms to facilitate learners’ rapid and efficient progress toward literacy. Therefore, teachers are supposed to be liberal when teaching multilingual learners by helping learners not familiar with the language of Instruction (LOI) by explaining concepts in the language familiar to them.