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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0        Background to the Study

Western Education was introduced into Nigeria by Christian missionaries around the middle of the nineteenth century. These missionaries remained in charge of dictating the direction and pace of language education from that period to the dawn of independence. They believed that the African child (and by implication, the Nigerian child) was best taught in his native language (Hair, 1967: 6) and that the interests of Christianity would be best served by actually propagating the religion in indigenous languages. As a result, language education began to focus more on the teaching and learning of indigenous languages.

From the early eighties, the Nigerian government gradually began to intervene in education with the view of according English language a lot more prominence in its policy. In 1996, the National Policy on Education (NPE) stipulated that introduction to literacy in Nigeria begins with pre-primary education. The language of instruction at that level is the child‟s mother tongue or language of the immediate environment. Exposure to English language as a school subject begins at the primary level while the language of instruction remains the child‟s mother tongue or language of the immediate environment.

This remains the status quo for the first three years or the lower primary level. From the fourth year, English language assumes the role of medium of instruction and continues   throughout the formal school years. Through primary education, it is anticipated that children would become literate in English and perhaps a Nigerian language. It is expected that the

Nigerian child should be proficient in English language, since it is obvious that English is “the means by which the Nigerian child has access to the general pool of knowledge and the modern skills which are essential to development” (Okebukola, 2004:11).

The ability to read is critical to survival in the modern society and so should be cultivated early enough to become part of a child‟s routine. Andzayi (2002) reports that children who learned to read early in life had been read to and had someone who answered their questions. Children who read along with parents or teachers from their earliest days through primary school years often have no difficulty with beginning reading.

The first three years of primary school are very crucial to the language development of the child. During this period, the child starts to learn to read independently. This is also the period that the child develops reading habits that will guide him or her through reading later in life. So, a good primary school language learning curriculum makes provision for both the development of reading skills in the classroom environment and encouragement of reading for pleasure. These days, reading as a form of relaxation is becoming less appealing to our young ones due to facilities like computer games, cartoons, the internet and cable network television.

Authors distinguish children‟s literature from adult literature because each type of literature is targeted at different sets of readers with different intent. In terms of content, structure and language, adult literature is usually laden with complex sentence structure, plot, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, riddles and imagery. This is usually designed to task the imagination of an audience who is considered intellectually and mentally mature. On the other hand, children are considered to be less exposed and so cannot be expected to create the same meaning out of situations depicted in adult literature. Owing to the fact that the vocabulary of a child is on the whole quite limited in comparison to that of an average adult, the pieces of literature meant for children must reflect the use of simple words and expressions which would be commensurate with their level of language development.