PERFORMANCE ON A SCALE: THE INFLUENCE OF MOTHER TONGUE ON THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OFENGLISH LANGUAGE

The study investigated the influence of mother tongue on the teaching and learning of English Language in North Bank area of Makurdi. The purpose of the study was to find out the extent to which mother tongue influence the teaching and learning of English Language. The study was guided by two research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Ex-post facto research design was adopted. From the population of two English teachers and 84 SS 2 students, the study sampled 22 respondents for the study comprising 2 English teachers and 20 SS 2 students using multi-stage sampling technique. Influence of Mother Tongue Scale (IMTS) and Students’ Performance Test in English (SPTE) were used for data collection. Data collected based on responses from the IMTS and scores from SPTE were analysed using regression to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that mother tongue has significant influence on the performance of teachers in the teaching of English Language. It also found that mother tongue has a significant influence on the performance of students in the learning of English Language. Based on the findings, it was recommended that constant drills and practices of modelling competent users of English Language should be imbibed by teachers and second learners of English Language in order to improve their performance and competence in the use of language.