News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: Aug 08, 2015
• Views : 668
• Category : Diaspora News
• Description : MIT-HAITI
  
  MIT scholar, and advocate of native-language instruction, backs linguistic change.
  
  
  Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
  July 20, 2015
• Location : Massachusetts, United States
• Website : http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/3-questions-michel-degraff-haiti-teaching-kreyol-0720

Overview

• This month, Haiti’s government announced a new policy to educate students in Kreyòl, the native language of most Haitians, rather than French, the language traditionally used in schools. Introducing Kreyòl-language instruction has been a cause of Michel DeGraff, a professor of linguistics at MIT and a native of Haiti. MIT News recently discussed the policy shift with him.
  
  Q. Why is it important to help Haitian students learn in Kreyòl?
  
  A. Research has shown that we learn best in the languages we speak most fluently. In Haiti, at least 95 percent of the population is fluent in Kreyòl only. The use of any other language of instruction is a recipe for academic failure. This failure becomes a national tragedy when it repeats itself generation after generation, with Kreyòl-speaking children being taught in French.
  
  According to research in cognitive science, becoming a good reader involves a “virtuous triangle” that seamlessly connects three sets of linguistic representations: letters on the page (“graphemes”), sounds in the corresponding language (“phonemes”), and word meanings (“semantics”). This triangle is most effective when all three — graphemes, phonemes, and semantics — pertain to the reader’s native language.
  
  When Haitian children who speak only Kreyòl are taught to read in French (often by teachers who themselves are not fluent in French), the graphemes on the page relate to one language (French) while the phonemes and semantics in the child’s mind relate to another language (Kreyòl). So the triangle is “broken,” and the child, at best, will manage to parrot French sounds without adequate understanding of the text.
  
  The matter is actually more complicated, because French words often sound somewhat like Kreyòl even when the corresponding meanings are substantially distinct. This “broken triangle” is the scientific explanation for one key factor underlying the massive failure of Haiti’s school system: Most Haitian children are never given the opportunity to become fluent readers. They never learn to read well, so they can’t read to learn.
  
  Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant, the data that I have collected at the Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa (LKM), a school in La Gonave, Haiti, show that Haitian children who are taught in Kreyòl achieve much higher learning gains than their counterparts who learn in French. Once children have strong foundations in their native language, they are better equipped to learn all academic subjects, including second languages such as French.
  
  Last year (2014), all 25 sixth-graders at LKM passed the official exam administered by the state (compared with an overall success rate of 71 percent). What’s less measurable, but also profoundly important, is the dignity of these Haitian children at LKM, whose joyful creativity is set free when they can learn in their native Kreyòl.
  
  As for mathematics and science, the logical thinking that is necessary to succeed in these fields requires a great deal of reasoning and communication. The effective use of language is, thus, an essential ingredient there as well. In the NSF-funded MIT-Haiti Initiative, we’ve documented how teachers and students perform better when pedagogical resources, especially those for learning science and mathematics, are in Kreyòl.
  
  Read more here >>