Abstract:
The language current policy of education in Ghana requires that English should be
used as the sole medium of instruction (MoI) from Primary 4 onwards, with the
native language taught as a subject. However, this policy has not been thoroughly
observed and put into practice by teachers and educational administrators. This
qualitative study therefore sought to find out the challenges of English only policy in
Ghanaian upper primary 4 schools, the strategies employed by teachers in English as
medium of instruction (EMI) classrooms to achieve their lesson objectives in P.4.,
and strategies that can be employed to enhance the use of the English Only in the
classrooms. The study was conducted in ten (10) public basic schools in Gomoa East
District in the Central Region of Ghana. The researcher found out that the influence
of L1 on L2 class, low proficiency and understanding of English by pupils, lack of
enforcement of the policy, the environment or locality of the school, lack of in service training for teachers, the early-exit model among others have militated
against the use of English as the sole medium of instruction in the public upper
primary (P.4) classroom. The researcher observed that the use of teaching aids, code switching, translation, safe-talk, previewing and reviewing were the strategies
teachers used in EMI classrooms in the selected schools. It is believed that if we
adopt the bottom-up approach, provide textbooks, give effective supervision, give in service training as well as adopting the late-exit transitional bilingual education
practice will enhance EMI usage in classrooms.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages
Education and Communication, submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in
partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award 0f the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Teaching English as a Second Language)
in the University of Education, Winneba.
SEPTEMBER, 2019
