Scribd.

com test 1

Literacies in the ( MTB- MLE ) : Teaching Strategies

Introduction

The links between education and language are fundamental and obvious in many different ways.
Language facilitates education, and language can be taught through education. Moreover, according to
Hudson (2010), language is the main medium of education; literacy as the mode of education is one of
the foundations of education; verbal intelligence is one of the most-used predictors of educational
success; foreign or second languages are traditionally an important part of the school curriculum;
language has a profound effect on education.

With these connections of language and education, the importance of teaching indigenous and
vernacular languages surfaced in the 1950s (King & Benson, 1999). This is in the context of international
efforts to promote mass basic education. Note that higher literacy rates and greater access to formal
education are necessary to national development. Vernacular language is defined as a language that is
the mother tongue of a group that is socially or politically dominated by another group speaking a
different language (UNESCO, 1968, cited by King and Benson, 1999). An Indigenous language, on the
other hand, is “the language of the people considered to be original inhabitants of an area”.