Ingse Skattum, Department of Classical and Romance Studies, University of Oslo

Netreed conference, Gausdal, Norway, January 7, 2002

The integration of national languages into the educational system of Mali.

Presentation of a NUFU project (1996-2006)

1 Introduction

The NUFU1 project “Research concerning the integration of national languages into the

educational system of Mali” has been running since 1996 and will continue till 2006,

through two five-year periods: 1996-2001 and 2002-2006. The project represents research

co-operation between the Faculty of Arts (FLASH) of the University of Mali (UoM) and

the Department of Classical and Romance Studies of the University of Oslo (UoO). Also

participating is the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in

Paris2. Co-ordinators are Professor Drissa Diakité, University of Mali and Associate

Professor Ingse Skattum, University of Oslo.

In the following, I will present the background and relevance of the project and

give an outline of the activities and results for the first period, before describing the plans

for the second period.

1 Norwegian Universities' Committee for Development Research and Education. Its main objective is

competence development in countries in the South through research co-operation and teaching. It is

financed by NORAD (the Norwegian Development Aid Agency, which took over from the Norwegian

Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2002). The Norwegian Universities and Research Institutes Council is

responsible for the administration through its NUFU board and secretariat.2 The agreement was first made with the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENSup) of Bamako, and transferred to

FLASH for the second period because the UoM came into being in 1996 after the first agreement was

signed. Also, the Malian co-ordinator, Professor Drissa Diakité, became Dean of the Faculty, a position he

still holds. Due to the same circumstance, the general agreement, which for the first period was with the

Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CNRST) in Mali, was transferred to the University of

Mali. Both UoO and UoM have bilateral agreements with INALCO.

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2 Background and relevance

The importance of mother tongue instruction for development purposes is beginning to be

acknowledged by donors. For how can you communicate development strategies in

medicine, agriculture, technical sciences, etc. if you are not understood by the people

concerned, if no vocabulary has been developed in indigenous languages for the new

concepts? And how can you develop democracy if people are excluded from political and

administrative functions because they do not speak the official language and because of

illiteracy? And how can you increase literacy if the medium of instruction is a language

the children do not understand?

In Mali, French is the official language and also the language of instruction,

though it is nobody’s mother tongue and is spoken only by the elite, 5-10 % of the

people. Bambara is the majority language, spoken by around 40 % of the around 10

million inhabitants as a mother tongue and by another 40 % as a second language. It is

progressing both as a first and second language, helped by a prestigious history (the

medieval Mali Empire and the 18th-19th century Kingdom of Ségou) and by the fact that it

is the language of the capital Bamako. Besides, it is a widely used lingua franca in West

Africa, spoken in around 10 countries. Scientifically, it is well described, with a

considerable research literature (to which one of our team members, Professor Gérard

Dumestre of INALCO, has made important contributions). It is, however, used essentially

in oral communication. Between the solid scientific knowledge we have of this language

and its extensive oral use, there is thus a “missing link”, which is its use as a normal

written means of communication. Nearly all writing is done in French. The gap between

French and the national languages is thus doubled by the gap between the written and the

spoken worlds.

No wonder then, that school results in Mali are alarmingly low: the children are

taught in French but hardly ever hear it spoken and so do not understand the subjects

taught. Nor do they achieve any real competence in the foreign tongue, oral or written,

though more than half of the school hours are spent on teaching French as a subject.

When Mali launched its school reform in 19943, introducing national languages as means

3 Bilingual schools were first started in 1979, but they remained marginal till the 1994 reform. (Cf. Skattum

1997a: 85).

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and subjects of instruction along with French in the 6 years of primary school, one of the

main reasons was the impact this was expected to have on school results. Improved

literacy rates were also expected to have the developmental effects mentioned above.

Besides, cultural independence constituted an important symbolic element. But because

of former neglect of the language question, linguistic competence was badly lacking at all

levels of the educational system. The two most important consequences were 1) that the

teachers’ colleges were unable to educate future teachers in these languages and 2) an

acute lack of didactic material. This went for all of the country’s 13 national languages,

both Bambara and the minority languages.

Since 1994 the number of schools teaching in national languages has been

steadily increasing. Before the reform was launched, of the 1653 primary schools in the

country, 108 were so-called experimental schools of the first generation. Though they had

introduced national languages as means of instruction besides French, they taught

according to the same pedagogical methods as in the “classical” French language schools

schools4. In 1987 two experimental schools of the so-called second generation were

established. Besides being bilingual, these schools adopted an active pedagogical method

called convergent pedagogy (CP). (The name refers to the convergence of the first

language (L1) and the official language French (L2).) Together, these schools gathered

around 5 % of the primary school pupils in the country (République du Mali, Ministère

de l’Education de Base 1994: 5).

Before the reform, the languages taught were Bambara, Fulfulde, Songhay and

Tamacheq5. In October 1994, the reform officially adopted CP as a pedagogical method

and since then, the list of national languages taught according to this method has been

steadily growing: 1994: Bambara, Fulfulde and Songhay; 1995: Dogon, Soninké and

Tamasheq; 1997: Bomu and Sénoufo; 2001: Bozo and Minianka, in all, 10 languages.

The three languages that remain are Malinké, Khassonké and Hassania (Arabic). In 1999,

there were 309 CP schools, reaching 16 % of the pupils (Diarra and Haïdara 1999).

4 The first generation experimental schools had a total of 21,407 pupils and 443 teachers (République du

Mali, Commission nationale de refondation du système éducatif malien 1995).5 The majority of the bilingual schools taught in Bambara. The exact numbers vary slightly, but for the first

generation, most sources cite 6 schools each in Fulfulde, Songhay and Tamasheq, the rest in Bambara. The

two second generation schools taught in Bambara.

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In spite of this positive evolution, the reform is not as solidly grounded as one

might wish. The main reason is in my opinion that the primary school reform has not

been followed up by education at higher levels, not even in the teachers’ colleges.

National languages are not taught after primary school, though the University of Mali is

working to introduce them as a subject. The year 2001 saw the creation of both an

Academy and an Institute of African Languages in Mali, the first functioning at a

continental and the second at a national level. They are, however, assigned for research,

not teaching. So Malians still have to go abroad to have a degree in their own languages.

In primary school, language textbooks still exist in very limited numbers and there is no

systematic study of these languages, while French grammar continues to be studied

extensively and systematically.

Another very important reason that the reform is not yet assured of success, is, I

think, that writing in the national languages is hardly used outside school and

consequently is considered less useful than writing in French. This goes for parents as

well as for many teachers. Success in society still depends on learning French. Attitudes

toward learning to read and write national languages will have to change and this can

only happen if it turns out to be truly useful to ordinary people.

2 First project period 1996-2001

Our project in its first period aimed to build competence in two languages, Bambara and

Fulfulde, the latter being the most important minority language. We did so through three

components: doctoral courses, fellowships and joint research, and concluded with a

“Feedback seminar” to inform the people concerned of our research results. I will

describe these four activities at a structural level before I present the research results.

2.1 Structure of project activities

2.1.1 Doctoral courses

We gave doctoral courses in applied linguistics for three years in Bambara and Fulfulde6.

They were given as part of the new doctoral program in educational sciences at the

6 Lecturers were Gérard Dumestre, Professor of Bambara at INALCO, and Rolf Theil Endresen, Professor

of African languages at the University of Oslo and a specialist in Fulfulde.

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doctoral school ISFRA (Institut Supérieur de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée). The

number of students increased every year, especially in Bambara, where we started with 4

and ended with 27 students. These courses are now the responsibility of the Malian

institutions. Unfortunately, they have not so far been continued, partly due to the lack of

Malian linguists with competence to teach at the doctoral school, partly because those

who could have done so, have been engaged by NGOs or Malian authorities for

administrative work instead of research and teaching.

2.1.2 Fellowships

We took on three fellows, two in Bambara and one in Fulfulde7. All three went to Paris

for one year, to INALCO, where they obtained their Certificates. One of the Bambara

fellows joined our research team on his return, the second continued with his Ph.D.

dissertation, which will hopefully be defended in Mali in 2002. The Fulfulde fellow was

supported for four years, passing three different exams : a Master (maîtrise) at ENSup, a

DEA (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies, which validates the first two years of the doctoral

training) at ISFRA, and a Certificate at INALCO.

2.1.3 Joint research 

The joint research had two successive components: a) Fieldwork in schools (1996-1999),

with results published in different ways; b) Elaboration of pre-grammar textbooks for 1st

and 2nd grades in Bambara and Fulfulde (1999-2001).

a) The fieldwork was conducted by two teams, one in Bambara and another in Fulfulde.

The teams have included persons from 8 institutions: besides UoO and INALCO, the 6

Malian institutions concerned with research on national languages at the start of our

project in 1996: Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENSup), Direction Nationale de

l’Alphabétisation Fonctionnelle et de la Linguistique Appliquée (DNAFLA), Institut

Supérieur de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée (ISFRA), Institut des Sciences

7 Amadou Tamba Doumbia (ISH), Mamadou Lamine Haïdara (ISFRA) and Demba Pamanta (DNAFLA),

the first two supervised by G. Dumestre and the third by R.T. Endresen.

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Humaines (ISH), Institut Pédagogique National (IPN) and the University of Mali (UoM),

all in Bamako.

The Bambara team consisted of 8 people, 7 Malian researchers and one from

UoO8. They did classroom observation, conducted language tests and investigations

through questionnaires and interviews of teachers, pedagogical counsellors and school

authorities. We were unfortunately unable to establish a Fulfulde team of more than three

persons9. The only field work conducted on Fulfulde was an enquête on loanwords done

by our fellow (Pamanta 2000), plus another on teachers’ work conducted both in the

Bambara and the Fulfulde regions, by a member of the Bambara team (Traoré 2000).

This reflects the sociolinguistic situation in Mali, where Bambara holds a unique position

amongst the national languages so that even a numerically important language like

Fulfulde, spoken along the Sahel belt from the Atlantic coast to Cameroon, arouses little

interest (we had problems getting students for the doctoral courses as well as researchers

for the team).

The fieldwork has resulted in a great number of publications and different items

of dissemination, 109 titles in all. These include books, articles, MA, DEA and Ph.D.

dissertations, papers, conferences and lectures. Besides, we have recruited one French

Ph.D. and one Norwegian MA student in the field (Tréfault 1997, 1999 and Opheim

1999, 2000). The complete list of publication and dissemination titles can be consulted on

the web site of the Department of Classical and Romance Studies at the University of

Oslo (http://www.hf.uio.no/kri/forskning/fransk/prosjekter/mali_pub.html). The most

important contributions are found in two issues of the Nordic Journal of African Studies

(Helsinki), the first in 1997 (vol. 6, no 2) containing 4 articles, the second in 2000 (vol. 9,

no 3) containing 10 articles. This volume was edited as a special issue: “L’école et les

langues nationales au Mali”.

8 Drissa Diakité (UoM), Sékou Oumar Diarra (ISFRA), Amadou Tamba Doumbia (ISH), Mamadou

Lamine Haïdara (ISFRA), Soumana Kané (DNAFLA), Mamadou Lamine Kanouté (ENSup), Ingse

Skattum (UoO), Samba Traoré (IPN). 9 Rolf Theil Endresen (UoO), Faradji Fofana, a primary school teacher from the Mopti region and Demba

Pamanta (DNAFLA).

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b) The elaboration of pre-grammar textbooks for 1st and 2nd grades in Bambara and

Fulfulde started in 1999 and a preliminary version of the Bambara textbook was finished

at the end of 2000 and then tested in classrooms throughout 2001. The final version was

submitted to a Malian publisher at the end of 2001 and will appear at the beginning of

2002. The Fulfulde pre-grammar was published in a preliminary version at the end of

2001 and is being tested throughout 2002.

2.1.4 “Feedback seminar”

In January 2001 we held a two-day “Feedback seminar” in Ségou, where most of our

fieldwork had been carried out. We strongly felt we should give back to the teachers,

counsellors and directors of schools the results of our fieldwork during these years. The

teachers especially need to be included, as most conferences tend to invite only

counsellors and directors. We invited the personnel of the 14 schools we had visited, plus

participants from local school authorities and from organisations that are engaged in

school questions: the parents’ association and two teachers’ unions. This meant around

130 local participants. Outside guests included representatives of the institutions involved

in our project (UoO, INALCO, UoM, DNAFLA, IPN, ISH, ENSup, ISFRA, CNRST),

plus two representatives from the Mopti region. This meant around 40 participants from

outside, the total number amounting to around 170 people.

At the seminar, the contributors to “L’école et les langues nationales au Mali”

presented their findings. Each had half an hour for the presentation followed by half an

hour’s discussion. We also presented the Bambara grammar. Malian national television

covered the event.

We consider this seminar a success, with one reservation: two of the articles

raised the practical problems connected with the Bambara alphabet’s four letters E, ç, ¯ and N, which are borrowed from the phonetic alphabet and do not appear on normal

computer fonts. They were however passionately defended by many participants. This

issue took some focus away from other important factors concerning literacy, language

competence and school education, but the debate certainly made clear their value as

symbols of cultural independence.

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2.2 Research results

2.2.1 Fieldwork

The research results of the fieldwork are best presented through the abstracts of the

articles contained in the special issue of Nordic Journal of African Studies (Helsinki), vol.

9 (2) 2000: “L’école et les langues nationales au Mali” (but see also Opheim 1999,

Skattum 1997a,b, 1999, 2000a,b, 2001, Tréfault 1997, 1999).

Drissa Diakité: The School Crisis in Mali

Since 1990, school strikes have seriously hampered teaching in Mali, especially in

secondary and higher education, and exams have been cancelled or held in spite of

insufficient teaching. Some say the government has shown it knows how to save the

school year but not how to save the school. This article analyses the complex reasons for

this crisis; violence and corruption as its means of expression; the government’s handling

of it; as well as the internal and external consequences. It finally suggests some possible

ways out of the crisis.

Samba Traoré: Teacher Training for the First Cycle of Primary School in Mali:

Problems and Perspectives

After a historical overview of reforms in teacher training since independence in 1960, this

article goes on to discuss the problems today, through fieldwork carried out in 1998 in

Ségou and Mopti, the two sites chosen by this NUFU project. The article analyses the

situation from the viewpoint of active teachers, retired teachers, school directors and

pedagogical counsellors. The questionnaires show that the different parties find that the

initial training is not adapted to today’s needs, especially with respect to pedagogical

innovations like convergent pedagogy. Such reforms are taught only in summer courses.

Though this is necessary for teachers already in practice, new methods should be

included in the initial training and at the same time supplementary education should not

limit itself to the latest reforms, but reinforce and improve the teachers’ pedagogical

practice. Furthermore, there should be special training for teachers in schools for

teachers.

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Mamadou Lamine Haïdara: The Introduction of National Languages into the

Educational System: the Attitudes of Teachers in Bamako

It is commonly thought that in many African countries, people’s attitudes to the national

languages as a medium of instruction are negative, that they prefer the European

language because of its prestige and the social opportunities it offers. This article

investigates the attitudes of teachers in primary school, key persons in the matter since

they are the ones who teach in the national languages. An enquête was carried out in

Bamako in 1990 and the results are re-examined ten years later in the light of the recent

generalisation of such instruction. The conclusion is that teachers are more positive than

one would think, and that the main reason for the positive attitude is sufficient

information. Other variables like age, experience, level of instruction and geographical

and social origin, play a lesser role. The educational authorities should therefore initiate

campaigns to inform the teachers and the rest of the population of the usefulness of the

national languages as means of instruction.

Soumana Kané: The Availability and Use of Textbooks in Language Instruction in

Convergent Pedagogy Schools

This article looks at the use of textbooks in French and national languages in the type of

bilingual education known as convergent pedagogy. Based on two field trips to Ségou in

1999, it gives the views of pupils, teachers and directors as expressed in interviews and

questionnaires, and combines this with classroom observation. It suggests that though

important additional funding is needed, the situation might be improved by a more

efficient distribution chain at all levels and also by a more judicious choice of books for

the class libraries. This includes more books in the national languages, for though the

official policy is balanced bilingual teaching, French fares better in every way: the

national language textbooks are fewer, distributed in smaller numbers, and come without

teachers’ guidebooks. One should thus start with the production of more textbooks in

national languages.

Mamadou Lamine Kanouté: Mathematics and National Language in a Bambara

School Context

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This article studies the teaching of mathematics in bilingual education in the Bambara-

speaking town of Ségou. The bilingual principles of convergent pedagogy are examined

in the light of teaching material, teacher training and classroom practice. It shows that

neither the textbooks nor the training enable the teachers to follow the pedagogical

principles that have been laid down, and that the transition from Bambara to French,

which takes place in the 4th grade as far as mathematics is concerned, still represents a

great problem in the 5th grade. However, the fieldwork, which took place in 1997,

revealed an interesting method that seemed to be a local invention. Building on the

Bambara game of riddles, different groups challenge each other both in creating and

solving mathematical problems, and the children participate eagerly in this game. This

type of teaching fits in well with active pedagogy and could be introduced into

convergent pedagogy at a general level.

Amadou Tamba Doumbia: Bambara Instruction According to Convergent

Pedagogy: Theory and Practice

This article looks at the teaching of the Bambara language in comparison with that of

French in schools that practise convergent pedagogy. It is based on three field trips to

Ségou in 1998-99, with classroom observation in the six grades of four primary schools.

It states that whereas French is taught in a systematic way, with weight on grammar,

Bambara is taught indirectly, through different exercises like memorisation of words,

reading and writing according to the global method, and dictation. Rules to explain

mistakes are hardly ever given, and the teachers themselves make mistakes, especially in

word segmentation. The conclusion is that though the active pedagogical method seems

to work well, the mother tongue instruction lags behind that of the second language, thus

jeopardising the mother tongue proficiency that is supposed to ease the acquisition of the

second language.

Ingse Skattum: Written Bambara in Primary School

Language competence tests in the 5th grade carried out in Ségou in 1997 show that after

four years of Bambara instruction, the children are far from mastering their mother

tongue in the written medium. This article analyses 28 stories freely told from a picture,

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and defines the most frequent types of errors, systemised in three major fields: sentence

division, word segmentation and transcription of the sounds that are written differently in

Bambara and French. The aim of this analysis is twofold: to help the teachers give more

efficient instruction in written Bambara by identifying the most difficult points for the

pupils, and to attract the educational authorities’ attention to the fact that if the national

languages are not equipped with grammars and orthographic rules, and the teachers are

not properly trained to teach them, then mother tongue instruction will not help the

children to improve their school results, nor will it develop the national languages as

written means of communication.

Demba Pamanta: French Loan-words in the Fula Newspaper Kabaaru: a Linguistic

and Socio-linguistic Analysis

The paper is a semantic, phonological, morphological, and socio-linguistic analysis of

213 French loan-words in the Fula dialect of Masina, Mali, the complete list of French

loan-words found in the issues of the monthly newspaper Kabaaru published in the

period 1995-1997. The words are classified according to their semantic domains; most

loan words are found in the domains of technology and administration. It is shown how

the loan words are phonologically and morphologically integrated to different degrees

into the linguistic system of Fula. Phonological integration implies a substitution of non-

Fula phonemes and an adaptation to Fula syllable structure. Morphological integration,

on the other hand, implies the introduction of noun class suffixes. The author has carried

out an inquiry to test to what degree a group of newly literate native speakers of Fula

living in villages in Masina understand a selection of these French loan-words. The

degree of understanding varies significantly between ‘current loan-words’ and ‘learned

loan-words’ – the latter group being loan words that according to the author's evaluation

are not much used outside the pages of Kabaaru. The paper ends with a discussion of the

pros and cons of French loan-words in Fula.

Marianne Opheim: Girls’ Schooling in Mali

This article deals with female primary education in Mali. Based on fieldwork carried out

in the village of Dougoukouna in 1997, it provides an analysis of the factors constraining

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girls’ schooling in a rural context. It argues that in order to understand fully the low

participation of girls in Malian education one must consider not only the factors that are

directly related to female status but also those of a more general kind. The article then

examines the main types of constraint that influence female participation in Malian

education. The socio-linguistic factors, such as the official status of a foreign language

and the absence of a written environment, affect both boys’ and girls’ participation in

education. Some of the factors related to the school environment, like the lack of school

materials and inadequate teacher training, also influence the participation of both sexes,

whereas others are closely related to the lack of female education. In particular, the socio-

cultural and the socio-economic factors such as early marriage, religious beliefs and the

lack of labour market opportunities are closely interwoven and they constrain above all

education for girls.

Gérard Dumestre: The Suffering School (a follow-up of ‘On the School in Mali’)

This is a follow-up of a first article published in this same review in 1997. It develops

further some of its major themes, for instance the necessity of better quality in the Malian

system of education, the need for lucidity on the part of the educational authorities, the

problem of national languages, and the concept of a ‘classroom school’ (classe-école, i.e.

a school reduced to one class). The idea that just a small minority of children are actually

affected by school problems is also developed.

After this presentation of the research results of our fieldwork, I will describe the

pedagogical principles that underlie our pre-grammar textbooks in Bambara and Fulfulde.

2.2.2 Pre-grammar textbooks in Bambara and Fulfulde

The Bambara pre-grammar’s title is Bamanankan mabEn ¯Ebilagafe (Eveil à la langue

bambara, ‘Awakening to the Bambara language’). It is written in Bambara, as a teachers’

guide, and is a completely new kind of textbook compared to the grammars we are used

to in European languages. It is conceived for the teaching of a language that has not so far

been the subject of analysis beyond the circle of researchers. The teachers have all been

educated in French, and those who have had any education at all in national languages

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have only had a short introduction to their transcription. What we want to bring about, is

a reflection on what a language is in general and what the Bambara language is in

particular.

The pre-grammar is a tool to teach the children to observe, define, classify and

extract rules from the natural material that mother tongue practice represents. The teacher

should encourage them to discover and define synonyms, to observe different registers or

levels of language, and reflect on words and expressions they do not understand and bring

these to class to discuss. He or she should give them classification exercises like writing

down the names of animals they know and then sorting them into categories (fish, birds

and mammals, etc.). Though the children should find examples themselves, the teacher

must take care that they are not too difficult to explain at their level. All this can be done

without expensive didactic material; paper, pen or pencil and blackboard will suffice.

The Fulfulde pre-grammar is entitled Dikoore e Bello ana pudda janngude naahu

fulfulde (Dikoore et Bello commencent à étudier la grammaire peul, ‘Dikoore and Bello

start studying the Fulfulde Grammar’). It is written in Fulfulde and made along the same

lines of “awakening” to the language, but is aimed at the pupils. The contents are

simplified accordingly and the text illustrated.

These two different approaches will enable us to compare their use. The teachers’

guide gives the teacher the possibility to adapt the exercises to the local context, and is a

cheaper and therefore more practical solution (the country can hardly afford books for all

the pupils). On the other hand, a grammar for the children gives them the opportunity to

read more, which they need. It is of course less costly to try this solution for a minority

language like Fulfulde.

Our conclusion is that the first period has been a success in terms of its objectives:

we have supported three fellows (instead of two as initially planned), the fieldwork has

been carried out much as we had hoped and publication and dissemination have far

exceeded our expectations, with 109 titles. We have also initiated an activity that we had

not originally planned, the elaboration of pre-grammars in Bambara and Fulfulde. This

joint research sprang out of the fieldwork, which brought to the fore an acute need for

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didactic material. The one activity that has not so far borne the fruits we had hoped for, is

the doctoral courses in applied linguistics.

In the second project period we will continue to give fellowships and develop

didactic material, and hopefully to introduce this material into the teachers’ colleges.

These and some more long-term objectives will be described below.

2.3 Second project period 2002-06

In the second period, the main goal is the same: to build competence in the national

languages of Mali at all levels of the educational system.

Our sub-objectives are to:

1) Build research competence in national languages amongst Malian researchers.

2) Elaborate, test and publish in a final version two grammar textbooks in

Bambara for the 3rd - 4th grades and the 5th- 6th grades.

3) Work towards the introduction of the teaching of national languages into the

teachers’ colleges.

4) Introduce the three Bambara grammar textbooks (including the pre-grammar

from the first project period) and the Fulfulde pre-grammar as part of the curriculum in

the teacher training colleges.

5) Work towards the introduction of national languages as full subjects of study

at the University of Mali.

In the following I will briefly present the administrative structure of our co-

operation before I describe the activities we have planned for this period.

2.3.1 Administrative structure

Six of the eight institutions from the first period will take part in the project (two of the

Malian institutions have changed their names): UoM, Centre National de l’Education

(CNE, former IPN), Centre National des Ressources de l’Education Non Formelle

(CNRENF, former DNAFLA), ISH, UoO and INALCO10. The co-ordinators remain the

same, while the team has been reinforced by three more members, one from CNRENF

10 Two of the institutions are no longer represented in the project: ENSup and ISFRA, partly because some

of their representatives, who continue in our project, have moved to other partner institutions.

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and two from CNE11, the two institutions most involved with textbook elaboration. The

research team now consists of 10 people, one French and 9 Malian researchers12. They

will hold Bambara grammar workshops twice a year. The Fulfulde team will continue

through the year 2002 only, and has been reduced to two of the former three members13.

2.3.2 Activities

The activities will be threefold: 1) Joint research on Bambara grammar textbooks; 2)

Sensitisation and dissemination seminars; 3) Fellowships.

2.3.2.1 Joint research on Bambara grammar textbooks

We are preparing two Bambara grammars: one for the 3rd - 4th grades (Grammar I) and

another for the 5th - 6th grades (Grammar II). They are doubly innovative: not only is the

subject matter new but the teaching method also has to be invented. For no such books

exist in Bambara, though there have been different attempts to write in Bambara on the

grammar of the language. Grammatical terminology will be elaborated, taking into

account earlier publications and the different terminological solutions they propose. As

for the teaching method, we will take into account contextual factors like the level of

instruction of the teachers, the meagre material means at hand in class and the lack of

documents they have at their disposal to prepare their lessons. The team is thus faced

with a truly pioneering task for which there is no model; rather we hope these textbooks

may serve as models for other national language grammars. The main principles of our

method will be as follows:

1) The two grammars will be a continuation of the pre-grammar Awakening to the

Bambara language. Focus will be turned on the child’s own discovery of the elements of

the Bambara language and reference made all along to the child’s own language use.

11 Mahamadou Konta (Institut des langues (IL)), Mamadou Niakaté (CNE), Sidiki Simpara (CNRENF).12 Youssouf Diallo, former editor of the Bambara newspaper Jèkabaara, and founder of the new Bambara

newspaper Dibifara, Amadou Tamba Doumbia (ISH), Gérard Dumestre (INALCO), Mamadou Lamine

Haïdara (CNE, formerly ISFRA), Soumana Kané (CNRENF), Mahamadou Konta (IL), Mamadou Niakaté

(CNE), Sidiki Simpara (CNRENF) and Samba Traoré (CNE).13 Faradji Fofana, Mopti school teacher and Demba Pamanta (CNRENF).

15

2) These school grammars should not be linguistic descriptions but simple presentations

with a great many examples and exercises and clearly defined objectives.

3) Only the most fundamental grammatical traits should be presented, for instance (for

Grammar I) the structure of simple sentences, the grammatical categories and functions,

word construction (nouns and verbs) and verb conjugation.

4) The grammars should strive not only to make the children reflect upon their mother

tongue, but also teach them to spell it correctly and prepare the ground for the discovery

of another language, French, by the transfer of grammatical terms from one language to

another and the comparison of their morphologies, etc.

These Bambara grammars will of course have to be fundamentally different from French

grammars made for francophone Africa. Classroom observation in our first project period

showed that the difference between the teaching of L1 and L2 is far from being clear to

teachers in general, who, when they try to teach Bambara as a subject (so far without

textbooks), tend to adopt methods from French grammar teaching, as if Bambara were a

foreign tongue (Doumbia 2000, Opheim 1999, Tréfault 1999).

Beyond the concrete goal of elaborating textbooks to ensure sound teaching of the mother

tongue, we consider these grammars as a first and necessary step towards giving the

national languages status as written means of communication. Ensuring a standard

orthography of the language is in fact a prerequisite for such a status. At present, due to

the general ignorance of the structure of the language, written Bambara is often difficult

to understand even for mother tongue users: words are segmented or agglutinated

according to fancy and sounds are transcribed in an impressionistic way, often influenced

by French spelling. There is little understanding of the importance of rules or of a

standard that is linguistically founded. This goes for school authorities and teachers as

well as for the general public. Our fieldwork on language attitudes shows that people

consider it unnecessary to teach the mother tongue as it is already known to the children,

16

and that its spelling is of no importance, while the writing of French is seen as a serious

matter constituting the most important function of schooling (Opheim 1999, Tréfault

1999). Language competence tests we have made of both Bambara and French show that

neither language is mastered in writing (Skattum 2000a, b), which is an indication that

theories on the importance of mastering LI before learning L2 hold true. (See discussions

on this matter in Baker 1996, Cummins 1979, Hamers and Blanc 1989, Hornberger 1991,

Hvenekilde et al. 1996, Lambert 1980, Lanza 1994, Romaine 1995, Skattum 1997a,

Skutnabb-Kanga 1981.)

We hope to spend two years on the elaboration of each of the grammars and one year to

test each of them.

2.3.2.2 Sensitisation and dissemination activities

The special thing about our grammar textbooks is that as far as the subject matter is

concerned, the teachers are beginners like the pupils. This means we will have to prepare

the ground by teaching both the teachers and the teachers’ teachers how to use these new

(and probably disturbing) didactic tools. Since it is essential that the Malian authorities

accept them as official schoolbooks, we also need the support of school authorities,

beside the general public (parents, teachers). We will try to obtain support from all these

parties through three types of seminars:

1) Sensitisation seminars for Malian school authorities: a one-day seminar every other

year in Bamako;

2) Methodological seminars for the personnel of two national institutions, CNE and

ENSup. CNE is responsible for the education of primary school teachers, ENSup for

that of secondary school teachers. Every other year we will arrange a five-day

seminar in Bamako to present the finished grammars to personnel from these

institutions.

3) Methodological seminars for students in the regional teachers’ college of the

Bambara-speaking zone. Every year we will give a five-day seminar at the IFM

(Institut de Formation des Maîtres) of Niono.

17

4) In addition, we would like to end our project by an international conference, inviting

representatives from the neighbouring West-African countries as well as from the

other three NUFU projects of the UoO working on language and education14.

2.3.2.3. Fellowships

We will take on three new fellows, one for an MA and two for Ph.D. degrees15.

The first fellow, whose mother tongue is Dogon, will be doing Ph.D. research into

the Dogon language area. This is a small, local, minority language (unlike Fulfulde,

which functions as a regional language in the Mopti region and in sociolingusitic terms is

a “high language” vis-à-vis the “low language” Dogon). Dogon is divided into highly

different dialects of which none has achieved the status of a common standard. The

project will examine how the introduction of this language in primary school has solved

(or not yet solved) the problems connected with the choice of standard, and also those

related to textbooks and teacher training.

The second fellow, who teaches philosophy at the University of Mali, will do her

Ph.D. on the semantics of philosophy in French, and the transfer of philosophic concepts

to pupils who speak Fulfulde (her mother tongue) and Bambara (which she speaks

fluently). She will adopt a cognitive semantic approach combined with translation science

to examine solutions to the problem of explaining philosophic concepts to pupils in high

school (lycée) and to students at the University. She will also compare the French

concepts with those of African philosophy.

The third fellow will be doing an MA thesis. As former chief editor of the

Bambara newspaper Jèkabaara, and recent founder of a new Bambara newspaper, he will

be examining Bambara newspaper discourse.

14 “Joint linguistic research concerning the implementation of the Ethiopian educational policy with respect

to the use of vernaculars in elementary schools” (with Addis Ababa University); “African Languages

Lexical Project” (ALLEX) (with UoZimbabwe); “The language of instruction in South Africa and Tanzania

– a research co-operation with a training component” (with UoDar-es-Salaam). 15 Hamidou Naparé (CNE), Coumba Touré (UoM) and Youssouf Diallo, newspaper editor. Naparé and

Diallo will be supervised by G. Dumestre and spend a year at INALCO. Touré will be supervised by I.

Skattum, with Prof. Youssouf Dembelé (UoM), as co-supervisor, and spend a year at UoO.

18

These research topics enlarge the scope of our project: we introduce one new

national language, Dogon, two new institutional levels (lycée and university)16 and a new

sub-discipline, cognitive semantics, as well as a new subject, the teaching of philosophy.

2.4 Conclusion

By the end of our project, we expect the support of six fellows to have increased the

Malian competence in national languages. The joint research activities (fieldwork,

elaboration of grammars, and publishing of articles) will also certainly have contributed

towards this goal.

We also expect to have published five grammar textbooks, one in Fulfulde and

four in Bambara. This will be a tangible result regardless of their immediate use. But

most of all we hope to have them introduced into the curriculum of the teachers’ colleges,

and published in sufficient numbers to be used in primary schools in the Bambara- and

Fulfulde-speaking areas.

The ultimate goal as we see it is to have mother tongue instruction introduced at

all levels of the educational system: secondary school, teachers’ colleges and university.

(Such a goal is of course not part of our project, nor given us as a mandate.) Only then

will the competence rest on sound grounds and the study of national languages offer job

opportunities for those who are interested. As it is, a vicious circle hampers their

introduction into the system: few jobs (except in research institutions and NGOs) await

those who on their own initiative acquire this competence. A more realistic goal, and one

that the project set from the start, is to introduce national languages as a full time course

of study at the University of Mali.

In a long-term perspective, we hope to contribute to a change of attitudes towards

the writing of national languages. For this to happen, Mali needs to ensure that the

writing of these languages becomes genuinely useful to ordinary people, for instance

through the possibility of addressing the public service in their own language. It is also

imperative that the teachers in charge of mother tongue instruction receive the necessary

instruction themselves and pass on their knowledge of the language structure and their

respect for a standard orthography. Finally, Malian cultural identity and independence

16 Two Norwegian MA students will be doing their MA theses at these same levels, on French language

competence.

19

would gain greatly if a genuine taste for writing in their own languages was aroused, not

only for utilitarian purposes but also for creative, literary production.

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