ABSTRACT
The work looks at the effects of the
use of Pidgin English on the student’s ability to learn English language in
Nigeria secondary schools. Emphasis is on three secondary schools in Lagos
state.
Despite the importance of Pidgin
English, it has adversely affected the use of English language. A great number
of times, a student prefers to express his/herself in Pidgin English rather
than go through the rigours of speaking simple correct English. Sometimes, they
use it interchangeably and this results to ungrammatical structures and non-
standard English. When students resort to any of the above mentioned problems,
the importance of the English language teaching is defeated. It is based on
this problem that this research attempts to find out the factors responsible
for the problem and procure a possible solution for them.
This work also aims at finding the
influence of Pidgin English on the ability of students in learning English
language. The method of findings in this essay includes randomly selected
secondary schools in Shasha area of Lagos state as mentioned earlier.
The sociological approach is used to
examine the society and environment of its use; it also looks at the position
of Pidgin English and the English language in Nigerian society. This essay is
set to find out the adverse effect of Pidgin English on students’ learning
ability in English language resulting from their environment and ethnic
differences.
In the course of this research, it
was discovered that majority of students cannot make clear error-free
sentences; some cannot even communicate in the English language except they
were allowed to express themselves in Pidgin English. The situation is really
bad and the trend is not good as it lays bad precedence for the university
education and indeed questions the credibility of would be graduates. This also
accounts for the high rate of failure recorded in English language examination
every year in SSCE and NECO. If I may quote one of the chief examiner’s words
as he comments on the general performance of the 2007 senior secondary schools
English language examination, he said, “contrary to expectation, the performance of the candidates was awfully
poor. Some of the candidates scored zero in the whole paper, having failed to
write an answer that can earn a single mark in any section of the paper. It appears
that a good number of schools registered illiterate and unqualified candidates
for this test”.
TABLE OF CONTENT
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 GENERAL
INTRODUCTION
1.1 STATEMENT
OF PROBLEM
1.2 AIM
1.3 OBJECTIVE
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
1.5 METHODOLOGY
1.6 METHOD
OF DATA COLLECTION
1.7 RESEACH
QUESTIONS
1.8 SCOPE
OF THE STUDY
1.9 DEFINITION
OF TERMS
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 LITERATURE
REVIEW
2.1 PIDGIN
AND CREOLE
2.2 PIDGIN
ENGLISH AND NIGERIA
2.3 AN
OVERVIEW OF PIDGIN
2.4 THE
FUNCTION/IMPORTANCE OF PIDGIN ENGLISH
2.5 FEATURES
OF NIGERIAN PIDGIN ENGLISH
2.6 THE
HUMAN COGNITION AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
2.7 THE
FIRST LANGUAGE AND ITS PROMINENCE
2.8 BILINGUALISM—THE
PIDGIN AND ENGLISH
2.9 VICTORIAN
ENGLISH
2.10 SCHOOL
ENGLISH
2.11 THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NIGERIA
2.12 THE
USES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NIGERIA
2.13 THE
PLACE OF PIDGIN/STANDARD ENGLISH
2.14 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 POPULATION
3.1 SAMPLE
3.2 PROCEDURE
3.3 DESCRIPTION
OF INSTRUMENTS
3.4 RESEARCH
DESIGN
CHAPTER FOUR
4.0 DATA
ANALYSIS/METHOD
4.1 ANALYSIS
AND INTERPRETATION
4.2 PRESENTATION
OF DATA
4.3 DISCUSSION
OF FINDINGS
CHAPTER FIVE
5.0 SUMMARY
OF FINDINGS
5.1 CONCLUSION
5.2 RECOMMENDATION
5.3 SUGGESTION
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
APPENDICES
REFERENCES
LETTER
OF INTRODUCTION
QUESTIONNAIRE
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
There have been many speculations
aout the origin of language over the years. Jespersen (1921) proposed that
human language originated while humans were enjoying themselves in one of the more
enduring speculations concerning the origin of language. It remains however, a
speculation. We simple do not know how language originated. However, Yule (1985
1-4) argued that the origin of language could be divine, according to one view,
God created Adam and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof – (Genesis 2:9). Alternatively, following a Hindu tradition,
language came from the goddess Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the
universe. In an attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few
experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting results. The natural
sound was also seen as the concept of “:natural sounds”. The suggestion is that
primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sound which early men
and women heard around them. When an object flew by, making a CAWCAW sound, the
early humans imitated the sound and used it to refer to the object associated
with the sound.
Also, one suggestion regarding the
origin of the sounds of language involves a link between physical gesture and
orally produced sounds. It does seem reasonable that physical gesture, involving
the whole body, could have been a means of indicating a wide range of emotional
states and intentions. A quite different level of speculation on the origins of
human speech comes under the general heading of gloss genetics. This focuses
mainly on the biological basis on the formation and development of human
language.
Language origin is inconsequential
though, it is one of the major distinguishing factors of man from animal
because it forms the basis for communication which essentially is a human
characteristic. Effective communication, is spoken of when there has been a
large language well-conceived and articulated but of course fathomable by the
receiver who in turn decoded and send a feedback. There is a need to note that
there are different languages in the world with their attendant dialect and
variety problems.
The advent of the colonial master in
African presumably marked the beginning of the use of the English language in
the west Africa sub-regions. In other words, English which is also Nigeria’s
official language was brought to Africa by her former colonial masters.
Nigeria, being a multilingual
nation, I suppose is one of the reason why English is accepted as the language
of official communication. The fact that most Nigerians are illiterate and
semi-illiterate made the using of English language as the language of official
communication a big problem. As a result, the English language started having
varieties, among which is, Pidgin English
also known as Nigerian English.
Adedoyin (1999. 40) is of the
opinion that Pidgin English is developed from a contact English (ce). He sees
it as a first variety of the Nigerian
English. He stressed that when two people come in contact, the necessity for communication
would necessitate the evolvement of a language of communication, a kind of
inter-language, which will be a mixture of the two languages in contact. He stressed
that Nigeria Pidgin English is a variety which is very strong among the less
educated and educated people too. Pidgin English is therefore defined as a
language variety used for inter-ethic context.
The oxford advance learners
dictionary defines pidgin as any of several languages resulting from contact
European traders and local people, for example, in West Africa and the far
east, containing elements of the local language(s) and French or Dutch, still
used for internal communication.
Yule (1996. 223-234) is of the view
that it is a variety of a language which
was developed for some practical purposes, such as trading among groups of
people who had a lot of contact, but who do not know each other’s language.
According to Opara (1999.52), pidgin
English in Nigeria originated as a trade language that is made up of foreign
language and the local language. It also originated as a result of the need for
communication among Nigerians living in towns and cities from different ethnic groups
who have no common language. Spencer (1971) opined that Nigerian pidgin English
developed as a result of intertribal marriages. The importance of Pidgin English
in Nigeria cannot be over emphasized.
This version of English cuts across
institutions, establishments and societies yet it remains the unofficial
lingua-franca in Nigeria. It is the most effective means if interaction among
the illiterate servants of the learned masters, the market women, and several
other groups of people. The popularity of Pidgin English can be seen in the
various ways in which Nigerian business world and the media use it. Apart from
using pidgin English for advertisements on radio and television, some bill
boards disseminate their information using the pidgin English to communicate to
their readers. For example, Ken Saro Wiwa (1985) in his work, Sozaboy (1965) used pidgin English. Also the work of Amos Tutuola, the Palm
Wine Drinkard is also written in the Pidgin English.
Soyinka (1964.65) in his work, The
Trial of Brother Jero and The Road respectively used the
pidgin English to accent the socio-economic aspects of Nigeria of them. In most
of his earlier works, the proportion of pidgin compared with English seems to
increase in favour of the former with the degree of informality of its speakers
particularly worth mentioning is the road.
Notwithstanding, pidgin English
though plays an important role in Nigeria, it also has some adverse effects on
children’s learning of the English language. They learn this language early in
life too. They may learn it from their parents of within the environment which
they live. Subsequently, they carry the language to school where it becomes
difficult for them to learn the proper language. Often, several families live
in the same compound or in a geographical area who do not understand one
another’s language; Pidgin becomes a convenient means of communication among
them. Children growing up in such area use the Pidgin English officially and do
not anything wrong in it.
At school, especially in the
southern Nigeria, where we have different ethnic groups residing in same settlements, for
instance, cities like Lagos, port Harcourt, Warri and other urban areas, Pidgin English is the commonest means of
communication especially outside the classroom. This makes it difficult for the
children of such settlements to use the correct or proper English in the class room
because they have learnt Pidgin early in life. It is against this background
that analysts have expressed concern over its continued use. They believe that
students who speak the Nigerian Pidgin English stand the risk of losing fluency
in the standard English going by the fact that the English language is not just
Nigeria’s official language but an internationally recognised medium of
communication in the contemporary world.
The researcher is therefore out to
investigate the following:
- Whether the use of pidgin
English affect the students’ learning of English language
- The effect the use of pidgin
English poses in use of English language
- The role the human brain paly
in language acquisition.
- It will look into the history
of the Pidgin English especially how it became so widely used, and the
role first language (LI) play in acquiring other languages. These will be
done discuss using the selected secondary school mentioned earlier.
1.1 STATEMENT
OF PROBLEMS
It is becoming increasingly
difficult if a particular student really went to school or perhaps was well
schooled in the rudiments of English. It is not an over statement if we say
that most of the students cannot make simple, clear and error-free sentences in
English language. This has been
attributed to the frequent use of pidgin by students either by way of code
switching or code mixing in communication at home, school and their
neighbourhood.
Though Pidgin English is fast
becoming more and more important as a language but notwithstanding, English
remain the only official language of communication in Nigeria. Therefore Pidgin
English, when it is first learnt by children, poses some problems in their
later life. They will find it difficult to differentiate between pidgin and Standard
English both in their spoken and written form.
Again the use of pidgin impeded
proper communication in the sense that the children have limited language as a
means of communication in a country like ours. Where English becomes a problem
for a child when he gets to school as he cannot understand the teacher because
the only language he/she understands in pidgin English.
1.2 AIM
This work aims at finding the influence of pidgin English on the
ability of students in learning
language.
1.3 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this study is to
find out effects of Pidgin English on the students learning ability in English
language, the performance of student in the English language and the possible
solution to this problem.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE
OF STUDY
Students and teachers, government,
parents, authors, and publishers of English textbooks are expected to benefit
from the findings of this study. Students are going to benefit from the study
because they will discover that pidgin has some limitations. For instance, they
cannot use pidgin to write internal examinations. They cannot use pidgin to
communicate their ideas in the midst of educated people. This study will help
them begin to use English so as to be conversant in it and at the same time
meet their academic attainment. This study will benefit the teachers in that it
will move them to use simple and correct English in teaching instead of Pidgin
English. The school management board will also benefit from this study since it
will help them to understand the causes of failure in English in the senior
school certificate examinations and other unified English examinations. The
authors of textbooks at all level of learning are not left out among the beneficiaries.
This study will enable them to realize that using pidgin English to express
themselves will not in any way build up the students whom they are trying to
build.
1.5 RESEARCH
METHODOLLOGY
This section of the work explains
the methodology to be employed by the researcher. The work will sample the opinion
of students from the schools under study as mentioned earlier using
questionnaires.
1.6 METHOD
OF DATA CCOLLECTION
A total of sixty questionnaires will
be distributed to the schools under study. The items in the questionnaires are
prepared adequately to achieve the intended purposes of this work. The
questionnaires will be given to the students at random and collected
for computing and analysis.
1.7 RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
- Does the use of Pidgin by way of
code-switching affect fluency in the use of English language?
- Does the use of Pidgin ensure
better comprehension of the English language?
- Does the mother tongue affect
further language acquisition or help broaden students’ horizon for more
language acquisition?
- Does Pidgin affect student’s
reading ability in English language?
- Does Pidgin affect student’s
writing skills English language?
- Does Pidgin affect student’s
listening skill in English language?
- Are students in the ss1 class different
from the students in ss3 class in their attitude towards the use of
English?
- Can students’ choice of subject
influence their attitude towards the use of Pidgin English?
1.8 SCOPE
OF THE STUDY
The study has been limited to three
schools in Shasha area of Lagos state. The reason being that the researcher has
taught and still teaching in some of the schools in the areas under study and
has discovered that most of the students
express themselves mostly in Pidgin English despite the efforts most
teachers have made to improve their
performance in the English language. The schools under study are:
- Access Universal College
- Pacific Comprehensive College
- State High School
1.9 DEFINITION
OF TERMS
The following terms are defined here
in relation to their context usage:
Pidgin English: this is an informal language used
among people from different ethnic group who already have mother tongue before
coming in contact with English.
Nigeria English (NE): this refers to the
variety of world English which is spoken by Nigerians with the peculiarities
and worldview of Nigerians adequately represented.
Standard English: this refers to the language of
the British which is generally accepted and use as an official language in
Nigeria.
Mother tongue: this refers to the first language a
person learns to speak before acquiring any other language. It is also known as
first language. (LI)
British English: this is the variety of
English used and spoken in Britain.
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