I recommend that emphasis on quality education in the English language In addition to mother tongue instruction.

I am an Indian. In our country, hundreds of languages are existing. My mother language is Bengali. One Noble prize was owned for the literature written originally in that language by Rabindranath Tagore (First Noble laureate of Asia). Personally I wrote at least 200 articles in different magazines and newspapers on scientific topic in Bengali. Still I write and publish articles different journals of English language. I am attached with one ESCI category journal published in English. I am writing this today to answer your question and to communicate with the people of Global Scientific community by ENGLISH.

No sentiment should be above the practical sense of Human being.

My question is a purely practical one, I noticed that in teaching my arab students. I can communicate science with them in English or French, however as foreign languages, I evaluated the efficiency of transmission of ideas in a foreign language compared to the mother one is not more than 80%. let us also assume, that students ability to understand a foreign Language compared to their's is also 80% Which means we loose in transmitting and also loose in receiving ideas in case of using a none native language . Is this logical and acceptable ?

Totally logical, but we have to understand the situation. In higher studies, it is very difficult to get good books written in any other language except in English. I was a student of Bengali language medium up to my 12 th. standard (Science Faculty). I felt many difficulties during the initial stage of graduation (Bachelor of Veterinary Science). In the 5 year course, all the books we read was written in English. The Veterinary Medicine book written by Blood and Anderson, Veterinary Parasitology by Soulsby etc. are still considered as No.1 position in their concerned subjects. In the field of Health Science, Principles of Internal medicine book by Harrison, or medicine book of Davidson can be categorized in the same way.

Reading of books in one language and writing of answers in another language in college level is not practical at least in Science streams.

What to do?

I recommend that emphasis on quality education in the English language In addition to mother tongue instruction.

Totaly true, thank you for your comment dear colleague. I remember that in the library of a prestigious French scientific institut, there were 54000 specialized scientific books, about 52000 of them were in English, 2000 in French and 1000 in all other languages, one solution may be to strengthen english language education, also to encourage adopting flexibility in the lectures, to use mother language and english in parrallel to help better understanding of the essentials while keeping a good updating window on the world's scientific progress.

In India, I have learned four (4) languages in my school days.1.Bengali (my mother language), 2.English, 3. Hindi 4. Sanskrit. It was not an easy task. I think maximum two language should be taught to the children, their mother tongue and English.

I think science should be taught in English language with occasional use of the students' first language.

If you don’t teach science in mother tongue at some point the younger generation will not be able to use their native language to talk about science. This is a vite for mother tongue. On the other hand, teaching in English apparently would give the graduates an edge on the international work-force market. In the latter case you should make sure you have quality teachers to teach science in English. I think, both options should be freely available.

I prefer the language whose use corresponds to the language of references and scientific research on a global level. Therefore, the English language for the education system in Iraq is the most useful in the field of science, especially the engineering and medical fields.

Hello,

As you have rightly observed, language is an important subject in all sciences because it provides students with a much needed vehicle for communicating with other scientists in different parts of the world as well as dealing with curricular assignments such as paper writing, or attending international conferences. Unfortunately, language learning creates a psychological angst for students of science. Consequently, using Content and Integrated Language learning (CLIL) has opened up a promising avenue where by focusing on and studying a subject matter written in the foreign language , the students learn the language as well , without feeling any communicative stress.

Best regards,

R. Biria

most of high quality journal published to english, so learning english is essential to know about new scientific issues in world.

Science or any other technical education should be in mother language as most of the technically developed countries are doing the same like in China, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Brazil, Germany , etc.

To help them in future publication I think English would be the choice. But teaching in a university or institute that use mother tongue will make it somehow difficult.