A scientific tool to foster cognitive, psychological, personality development in children.
The mother tongue has a very powerful influence on the development of an individual. The blissful sounds we listen before we are born in our mother tongue, play a very important role in defining our thoughts and sentiments. A child's psychological and personality development depends on ways he mother tongue has been used with them. The first understanding, notion, and skill learning of the children of the world around them begins in the language they first learned. The first language kids learned have capacity to irreparably change child’s brain. Acquaintance to language as a child affects the way their brains handle other languages ​​years later.
Mother tongue as a scientific tool for formal education has gained significance in the present competitive environment. Language originates in a specific socio-cultural environment as the first distinctiveness marker. UNESCO rightly says that language is more than a means of communication; It is the very condition of our humanity also our beliefs, values and identity are embedded in it. Essential skills of literateness are developed easily during the time children’s mother tongues are built up. Hence, when children master their mother tongue, then their capabilities to learn the other host languages is eased.
M Venkaiah Naidu , the Vice President of India mentions following in his article to TOI, when we talk in our first language, the heart, brain, and tongue form a direct link. Alice Mado Proverbio, a professor of cognitive electrophysiology, discovered how the brain absorbs and recalls languages differently in early childhood and later adulthood. Native languages cause the brain to form a series of associations that manifest as enhanced electrical activity. Jim Cummins (2010) says our mother tongue is the language we use to think, dream and feel emotion, incomplete first language skills often make learning other languages more difficult.
Mother tongue helps Psychological built: It supports children’s social-emotional and identity development and increases their self-esteem. A child expresses his first feelings, happiness, fears, and first words through his mother tongue, hence most crucial stage of our life, childhood, is spent in its imprints. Learning another language afterward i.e., being bilingual helps children have skills managing stress and anxiety in later stages if life, says research.
Mother tongue making impact in Sociocultural wellbeing: Lack of proficiency in mother tongues might cause intergenerational struggles between children and other family members as being not able to communicate smoothly with others. When parents and children speak the same language, it helps the interaction between the two sides become more meaningful. Talking in their mother tongues, children can help their parents involved in their routine activities and keep them rightly informed about learning at school, messages from teachers, their relationship with friends etc. so that, the relationships exist not only between parents and children but also between families and schools and society become closer.
Cognitive benefits of being bilingual: Bilingualism reimbursements students’ cognitive skills by intensifying and elevating capabilities related to thinking and reasoning. This can be seen by the ways children use diverse languages to show their thoughtfulness, insights and solutions of real situations. Subsequently, this fosters the academic achievement of children, since those skills play a vital role for children to gain important knowledge of all subjects at school.
Learning mother tongue helps better learning: The crucial processes of learning such as cognition, thinking, and so on, are developed when children approach more than one language. Scientists also show that there is a correlation between time spent in home languages and learning outcomes in English. Evidently if children are fluent in their mother tongues, then changes of getting successful in learning at school are more. The information children gain in their mother tongue helps them be ready to learn other languages, as they take less time them to understand new contents in host languages.
There are difficulties that parents have to face to implement learning in mother tongues for their children, but NEP 2020 have tried to serve the purpose to some extent. Let’s take pride in teaching our own language to our children and see through their hearts and other hidden treasures will come out eventually as added benefits...
Article referred importance guidance from:
https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/mother-tongue-shapes-personality-development