Importance of Speaking One’s Mother Tongue (ESL)

It is important for a teacher to respect the background of students, including native language and culture. The concept of additive approach strives not only to develop the first language while the second language is being added. Subtractive approach is concern only with the development of the second language (English); in essence that they strive to replace the first language with the second, at least in the academic realm.

In essence, in Mauritius, the approach is rather subtractive because our educational system strives to replace our native language Creole and add a second or a third language that is English and French. This is in contrast to the nature of additive, which strives to maintain our native language and then adding a second and a third language. The fact that English and French languages are considered as “prestigious” and “powerful”, which is used in the mainstream education and jobs market, Creole, as generations go by becomes subject to low status. As a result some Mauritian tend to stop using Creole as a medium or simply modify the language by adding French words to render Creole language impressive. With time, there are dangers that Creole loses its original linguistic form.

Still what we do not realize is that the majority of Mauritian speaks Creole at home, in work place and almost all the time. Obviously Creole is familiar and we are very comfortable speaking our native language. But what we are doing is replacing the language we are comfortable with, with that of a language, which is not even our native language.

However with studies made, it has been found that the additive approach helps to maximize linguistically, academically and cognitively students’ development than making use of the subtractive approach. What should be considered also is that the country itself becomes subtractive; it takes away from us and doesn’t even add anything back.

If we look at both concepts, evidently the additive approach is preferred, however this is not always realistic as is in the case in Mauritius. Our government does not support this development and we lack the necessary resources and context to convert into this approach. By resources and context I mean that there are not many qualified teachers to teach proper Creole in schools. Furthermore the fact that many Mauritian consider our native language as inferior does not help to make things easy.

It would be a big step to do to modify the curriculum to support the additive approach. But if steps are taken to help to promote the additive approach, such as encouraging teachers to rethink about their pedagogy and encouraging the educational system to accommodate to the additive approach, can cause a new submersion of attitude towards our native language.

However if we consider adding a native language maintenance, it is possible for our educational system to convert into additive. What is suggested is to find a way in adding our native language to the educational program without any pressure existing to reduce the use of our native language in the mainstream of education and market jobs. In this way, students can continue to develop both academically and cognitively in Creole while benefiting from academic English and French as well.