Outdated Teaching Methods Are Hurting Language Ability in Nigeria

Language Ability Has Somewhat Improved, Though

Language ability has improved in Nigeria. According to data from UNESCO, Nigeria’s literacy rate in 2018 was reported to be 62.02%, representing an increase from previous years. Yet, Nigeria’s literacy rate was still lower than the global average, ranking below many developed and some developing countries.

We still have a long way to go. Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

Many factors are responsible for this, such as poverty — it is well-known that students from low-income backgrounds tend to have lower literacy levels than those from moderate to high-income families.

What Is Harming Language Ability?

This article highlights another factor responsible for limited language ability — outdated teaching methods. Specifically, the lack of contextualisation and relevance is harming English Language acquisition and, thus, contributing to low literacy levels. While this article focuses on the English Language, its eventual interpretation is meant to cover other native languages in Nigeria.

Let us begin.

The Problem: Lack of Contextualization and Relevance

Traditional textbooks and teaching methods emphasise rote learning and memorisation. You are taught grammatical concepts independent of their use and relevance.

I am pretty sure anyone can chant the definition of a noun — “a noun is the name of any person, animal, place or thing” — but a lot of people, especially Upper Primary to Secondary School students may not actually be able to identify nouns.

This approach to teaching has little to no stake in reality. I founded Vividly to address this.

Students deserve a vivid illustration of whatever concepts they learn. My rule is that every single concept that a teacher introduces must be justified by its relevance.

In other words, real-world examples of people using a grammatical concept must justify students learning it.

Imagine you learnt prepositions, words which show the relationships between words in sentences — imagine you learnt them by either;

• Browsing through Google Earth and describing the location of buildings in relation to others;
• Or, if football’s your jam, you did it by describing the position of players on a football field:

— Neymar is behind Messi.

— The goalposts are opposite each other.

— A little girl sat across my chair.

Imagine you learned concepts in the context of your interests or others.

In the next post, we will explore further just how Vividly aims to bring contextualisation to classrooms, and we will also include a short story to buttress our point!

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