An evaluation of the Rwandan trilingual policy in some nursery and primary schools in Kigali City
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Authors
Niyibizi, Epimaque
Issue Date
2010-06
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
Language policy , Mother tongue (MT) , Bilingualism , Medium of instruction (MOI) , Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) , Additional languages (ALs) , Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) , Trilingualism , Multilingualism , Rwanda
Alternative Title
Abstract
This research study aims to evaluate how the trilingual policy (Kinyarwanda, French and English) is
implemented in Kigali City’s nursery and primary schools in terms of facilitating learners’ cognitive
academic language proficiency (CALP) development, in both the pre-2008 and post-2008 language
policies. It is an exploratory-qualitative-interpretative research study, which analyses the language
preference, the age of change-over and the multilingual models adopted and how they contribute to
learners’ CALP development. It also analyses the implications of the post-2008 policy.
The findings indicated that initial bilingualism, initial trilingualism, early total immersion and
gradual transfer models were implemented in the pre-2008 policy; while the post-2008 policy
implements early total immersion. The learners’ CALP in both the MT and the AL could be more
developed in public schools under the pre-2008 policy due to exposure to Kinyarwanda instruction
from the start but it may not be developed fully under the post-2008 policy, because English is used
as MOI from the onset of education.
Description
Citation
Niyibizi, Epimaque (2010) An evaluation of the Rwandan trilingual policy in some nursery and primary schools in Kigali City, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3720>