Mother-tongue will only help in local situation and it helps to understand the subject matter without doubts. but the communication system only give effect, if we present in English, which is practiced and known many in present situation of globalization

Thank you Chris, thank you Vasudeva. You have provided very useful argumentation. However, it is thought that imposing a language other than mother tongue in higher education is a form of linguistic hegemony and mother tongue marginalization. It is argued that Finland, Japan, etc. use the first language in higher education and they are excelling in different fields without a need for English. In the Middle East for example, English is recommended in Arab universities but the students have very low English proficiency which makes the situation worse: learning the content as well as learning English.

In South Africa, where English, the language of learning and teaching at most universities, is an additional language for the majority of students in higher education, the construct of 'discourse' has been used extensively to understand students' experiences. Academic work requires mastery of academic discourses - which are discipline based. If students have not accessed these discourses, then their ability to use a home language for academic work will not necessarily help them. Thomson (2008) describes a project where students in a postgraduate programme were provided with expert translations of key texts in isiZulu. The students' response to these texts was along the lines of 'What is this Zulu?" Students could not access the elevated discourse of the texts and preferred to use the original English texts.

Christie's (1983) models of language also help in understanding this question. Christie distinguishes between a model of language as an 'instrument of communication' and a model of language as a 'resource'. The former understands language as a vehicle for transmitting ready made meanings from one language user to another. The latter sees language as a resource for making meanings - and in doing so it draws on a Hallidayan model of language where language use involves conscious choices informed by understandings of context. If students and lecturers are drawing on different contexts (as they often are in South Africa and as I have shown in my own work) then the choices they make in using language are often inappropriate - it is not necessarily that they do not know the forms of the language but that they choose inappropriately.

From this perspective, simply allowing students to use the home language will not necessarily result in their being able to produce the kinds of texts (both spoken and written) expected by the academy. Any attempt to use the home language would need to be accompanied by support for the acquisition of academic discourses and specifically of the values and attitudes which inform them.

You could argue that we are not only dealing with linguistic hegemony but also with discursive hegemony.

Thank you Chrissie.

Thanks Intisar for sharing your views.

I do agree to use mother language in teaching either UG or PG studies, I have the feeling the income for students will be much better and the interaction is high. However, with lack of references for both UG and PG as well as the books and the eaxct translation of some scientific words make it more problematic. In my country, we have experience with lecturers and teachers from non-arabic countries, the outcome was almost very low. Most of students on both levels were complaining and the attendance of students were low. English is a language of communication for sciences such as publications in high impact factor, conferences, meetings. Therefore it makes lecturers and students trying to communicate scientifically in English.

Thank you Fathi. We share the same experience.

It would be nonetity on my part to post my comment to all who have so much of experience. In my personal view, an individual thinks, understands and develops a concept only in the mother language, whatever the medium of instruction maybe. Regarding teaching in higher education, my view is that, usage of two or more language would yield better results (with no offence to anyone).

Thank you Suresh.

At least in a transnational scientific field like public health, especially global or international health, for our times English is indispensable as many highly relevant books and publications appear only in English. Only with a solid knowledge of English we can expect our students to keep up with modern developments in the field.

Thank you Ulrich.

Science, and technology, are nowadays global enterprises. No longer science is the monopoly of a single country. English was chosen, wisely or not, as the common spoken and more importantly written language for science. I have encountered a handful of papers in my career written in Japanese or German, not more than 10, that I badly needed to read and went through the pain of having them translated. In societies that have wisely chosen to invest in science and technology, the ability to speak and write in English is quite important. Aside from the formal sources of information, Journals and International Meetings, informal but important ones such as the Internet and Wikipedia play a role at all levels of education. Only about 42% of Wikipedia has been translated to German, and only about 5% to Arabic. Without these informal sources of science and technology it is hard to see how young people can be educated in their mother tongue and compete in the world successfully.

Thank you Mario. I learn something new from each reply I get from such great scholars.

i agree that, mother tongue should be the medium of instruction if sufficient books, literature and practices available in that language, otherwise English should be the medium of instruction where all types of resources are available.

I feel there is no replacement for english as a medium of instruction.

There are so many scientific terms that just cannot be translated into local languages.

Having said that, i feel that explaining a difficult concept or hypothesis while teaching science, in his/her local language,becomes easier for a student who is not very conversant with the english language.

I have been a professor in oral anatomy & histology, as well as oral & maxillofacial pathology for many years, at various dental colleges in india.

I have not changed scientific words for nomenclature, but explanations are always in the local language.

For example, i cannot change the word "salivary gland" but i do explain that it is like a small balloon filled with liquid, in the local language.

Thank you Prof. for the comment.

hi wahed

i have been reading all comments.

i want to say something abt marios comment.

mario, it mat be possible to get a lot of books in the european languages, specially german and french, as most people in one country speak one language.

but in countries like india, with so many states speaking so many local languages, it is almost impossible to get ANY books in that language.

i have suggested to my college deans and chairmen to recruit local teachers as faculty.

it becomes easy for this person to explain concepts to his students in the local language, and to translate the english texts to them.

I am uploading pix of two different colleges in india where i have been a faculty member.you can see the cultural differences, and of course, the languages are totally different.

thats a pic of a college in gujrat

Thats a pic of a college in jammu..my lecturers are kashmiri locals

Each state has a different language and culture.

How-so-ever we may be fluent in a foreign language. we always dream in our native language. Our brain is driven by our mother tongue. The neuronal circuits of our brain understand the language it has learnt the earliest.

Hence learning should be in one's mother tongue.

A question which came to my mind while reading the question posted here is that What is Teaching? and What is the duty of a teacher? In my opinion, teaching is to assist the learners learn. literatures on a specific subject not may be there (in abundance) or the terminology may be absent in the native language, it is the duty of a teacher to help the learners understand the concepts. As Muhammad Rafique has already stated earlier in the discussion that "our mind is driven by our mother toungue", the teacher should clarify the concepts in native language (if the class is not multilingual). this also calls for the development of the native languages too (which in itself would be a great endeavour).

I highly favour teaching in two or more languages. And, obviously we cannot ignore english as it the communicative language (papers, articles, books, etc being mostly published in english).

Great! However, a question might be asked here "why local languages are not promoted to compete the status of English? For how long is English going to remain a medium of instruction, science and technology? Why don't we take lessons from Greek, Latin and Arabic which were once media of instruction, science and developments? Another question is: Don't you feel that using a language other than students' mother tongues in university education affect their academic performance due to their low level of proficiency in this language? Our students in many Arab universities suffer two problems: learning the content and learning the language of instruction at the same time. They spend most of their time translating. Great suffering.

Let me share one incident which occured few months back in Manipur University: the students undergoing masters degree in English complaint that in the classes most of the teachers taught in 'Meiteilon' (local language). the question is whether the teachers were not competent to teach English in english or were they trying to make the students understand the text in native language. it may also be noted that the class was multi-lingual (in manipur-a small state in northeastern corner of India covering only 22327 sq. kms. -there are about 37 ethnic groups having different dialects). the dilemma.

Another fact which we can't ignore here is that English is an associate official language of the state.

Regarding promotion of local languages to compete the status of english- we cannot ignore the population dynamics of the language users- a language like Meiteilon (my native language) is used only by some 30-35 lakhs individuals in the whole world.

My argument is not to compete with English language but to develop the native languages so that the learners understands the text. the local termilogies can be developed, the text can be re-written, etc.

What we all need to understand is that English is a 'world language'- a language spoken and learnt by many as a second language. The possible reasons may be historical- imperialism and colonialism.

Prof. Wahed, I agree with you completely. I teach in University of Mumbai, where I get students from all over the country. Many of them complete their primary as well as secondary education in their regional language and then during graduation, English is thrust on them as the primary language of instruction. This not only deteriorates the quality of output, but also forces the student to run after marks, rather than gaining knowledge.

The real problem is they have to read and listen in English, then think in their own mother tongue and again translate the content into English for the exams.

To help the students, most of us teach in English, Marathi as well as Hindi, so the students understand the subject well. We also allow them to answer in Marathi or Hindi, if they are comfortable in them, rather than English. We have also created question banks, with Marathi / Hindi translations, which we distribute to all students at the beginning of the semester. These students have to work harder, as they have to translate everything into their own language, because most of the books are available only in English, like some of our colleagues have mentioned.

We also encourage them to translate our PPTs into Hindi or Marathi, which we then distribute to the next batch.

I would love to know your views and what you do to tackle this issue. This could help us all.

Thank you Mangesh. I am in the English department in Saudi Arabia. However, I am doing research on the role of English in science majors. We have discovered the students are suffering a lot doing exactly the same as your students. We are trying to convince linguistic policy makers to work on Arabization to solve some of their problems.

Wahed, in India, we have tried Indianisation of technical terms and it has thrown up several un-understandable, funny and sometimes ridiculous words. Instead, I encourage my students to write the terms as they are, while writing the rest of their answer in the language of their choice. I also encourage the students to learn English as much as they can, because all said and done, it IS the global language.

I certainly do not want to get into a linguistic and political debate here, but what I am concerned about is that the students be able to communicate well while writing. I have seen many students scoring low because they are not able to communicate in English. This has certainly helped in generally improving their understanding of the subject and also quality of answers.

Wahed, I largely agree with the first response by Chris in a world seen as Global Village. However, with a language come the dangers of semantics and ontology which may be at clash with local ways of expression and conceptualisation. In Soviet Russia, they made it possible to get translated and distributed all recent scientific works/books/journals in time. However, in this globalised world to communicate with others one has to know English. But, for formation of original ideas and for thinking differently and doing differently, it is to me must that one is educated in his/her mother tongue. However, in the case of constraints teachers have to inculcate critical thinking among students.

Thank you Firoz.

Not agree

With what? Please make a detailed argument Fatima. Thank you.

Definitely i support the statement. Since i am a Assst. Prof. in An Education institute i am every year in contact with the students from various faculties (degree). So with my that experience i am Supporting the statement.

As a university prof I feel Allow the people to think in English language will help them to understand the subject better .Some time technical terms in management can be explained in regional language

DR.R.K.Srivastava

Prof and research guide

Mr srivastava is right....very few scientific terms can be translated into regional languages.

In india, we dont even have a proper national language.

Hindi is declared the national language, but the southern states have not accepted it..

If we had a uniform language thread all over india, maybe we could work on translations..as you say "arabisation"....i would call it "indianisation"

it would be a great help, as most people can read and write hindi.

At higher education, it is always better to use English as the medium of instruction when the students are already well versed with the English language. But, with the bilingual students who studied in the regional medium schools, it is better to use the mother tongue judiciously at the higher education as English is the medium of instruction.

Is English the only language to be prefered as the language of instruction at institution of higher learning? Let us not consider it as the only language that could be used for instruction because if we do, the identity of students will be compromised. Let us celebrate diversity and instill the the element of pride in our students. Let use recognise mother tongue at universities as s vihicle to transport outcomes.

@Joseph & Tala:

Both of you right. Every language is born out of its cultural context and has potentials and limitations of expression in respects of feelings, emotions, philosophical and scientific context. Though I do not believe in the production of science in situated condition or constructionist position, but also do not deny the fact that knowledge albeit science is socially produced in spite of its universalism.

In science we study categories of things and causal processes from the perspective of a person 9Student/scientist) who uses a language that is product of a particular cultural milieu that has its own history of promotion and suppression of certain ideas and concepts having impact on language itself and members that culture have particular ways to express their ideas and concepts. Naturally, if there be single language, there will be uniformity in the ways of thinking and doing science and communicating it. Diversity of languages creates potentials of thinking, expressing and doing science and thus opening a whole vista of ways science can be done and nature be understood.

However, irony of the situation is that due to colonialism and present neo-colonialism and imperialism which have made world a global village, people are bound to use English be it business or publication and communication of science. it is interesting to note that the French who are known to preserve their language and culture have recently started to learn English for that matter.

One more i would like to add is

"m/other " look mother itself contained "other" isn't it?

Mother tongue has been found to be the best medium of acquiring knowledge. It is also known that exclusion of mother tongue from the learning environment hinders critical thinking development, other language learning and referencing identities. A confident student in such an environment can develop analytical skills relatively easily. The challenge though is to have a good subject bilingual teacher and some technical terms (for which there may be no local language equivalent) which are widely understood . Accordingly, a blended learning environment where there is no self-consciousness would perhaps be the way forward.

If I read this discussion correctly one argument is missing which I brought up earlier: Without English the access to the world literature is very limited. This is one of the two key arguments for the use of English in higher education. The other argument has been mentioned: Most key terminology can hardly be translated into national languages or if so gets a nationally understood meaning deviating from the original definition.

Mother Tongue will enhance the understanding than English. But English has become a Global Language. Hence its better to improve one's English Understanding skills.

I think, those who support a bilingual learning environment are very right but my argument remains that without knowledge of English (which should become mandatory for the time being; imagine you have to learn Chinese in the future) the access to the relevant literature is very limited. I am German and studied in German and English (the latter abroad). Today we have programmes in English and German. Presently I work in Serbia, where rcently they introduced additionally a postgraduate Master of Public Health in English.

I agree. I have argued here that though I do teach in three languages, my students find it difficult to understand literature even though they have access. Besides, they end up using the wrong contexts. Students who prefer regional languages should have at least mid-level English language training.

Dear AWQ Al Zumor: This is an excellent question.

But as to what you ask, that depends. It is a proven fact that schooling in the mother tongue gives the best results in education, specially in the early stages. Spanish is my mother tongue, but English classes began very early on my first year of school. I am stronger in Spanish, but my English is much better than average. It has been proven by research that being "bilingual" helps the brain in many ways and makes us better at all intellectual and social tasks. I know that, for many, being forced to speak and write in English is an unwanted and politically sensitive imposition, but it might be useful to learn English and use it in intellectual and academic pursuits. For those who resist this imposition, it might be good to learn English in order to be able to communicate with other non-English natives whose mother tongue is not among the main (U.N.) languages: Arabic, Spanish, French, English, Chinese. Think of English as a sort of "Esperanto". And never forget that most of the United States population of British descent cannot write a simple letter because their English is so bad. Dear friends at RG, learn all the languages you can. The more languages we learn, the better we will be able to communicate effectively with others. :-)

Best regards to all, Lilliana