아프리카ㆍ중동

Although Tanzania is a multi-lingual country, two dominant languages, KiSwahili and English, have been widely spoken in public as well as private environment. Since its independent, Tanzanian government has gave a priority to KiSwahili as a national language, while English been used in the field of commerce and technology. Therefore, there is a consensus of KiSwahili for national unity and English for modern and global competitiveness. In the wake of Neo-liberalism and Globalization, language situation in Tanzania is drastically changing. Those who pros to neo-liberation argues that current English education is not enough to gain global competitiveness. They suggest that Tanzania government should introduce English medium curricula in Primary School in order to give students confidence for English in their early ages. They argue that early birds can catch worms. Nevertheless, there are cons against early English education. Two points are raised. One is that education infrastructure is not good enough to start early English education in Tanzania. As rural population is more than 70%, rural inhabitants have poor educational environments compare to urban areas. Therefore, early English education only willl give a favour to urban students. Secondly, this will result a dichotomy of Tanzania: those who speak English and have all priority of social and economic resources and those who speak Swahili and have no these priorities. These arguments may will go as there are sharp division of opinion on this issue. Nevertheless, crucial questions should be raised. How does Tanzanian government supply qualified English medium teachers?; how does Tanzanian government make a proper educational program using English as an instruction language?; and how does Tanzanian government get enough budget for all these?