When he arrives at primary school at the age of six or seven, the Nigerien child knows how to speak in one or more national languages, but not yet in French. Certainly, French is the official language of Niger, but the degree of linguistic familiarity with this language is very diverse, or even non-existent, depending on the geographical, social and family origin of the child. However, from the first year of school, the Nigerien child is required to learn to speak, read and write in French, that is to say he is literate in a language that he does not speak or understand. not.

Before going to school, the child has an unexplained lexical and syntactic experience of his mother tongue. He knows words and he forms sentences, without knowing what a word or sentence is. Once at school, it is this non-conscious experience that will allow him to better understand writing and attribute meaning to it. Unfortunately, as they do not receive academic training in their mother tongue, the Nigerien schoolchild does not benefit from this experience. In addition, not having any language experience in French, he has difficulty developing social and cognitive skills as a reader and making oral-written connections. However, all recent research on reading shows that reading comprehension is based on the child's general knowledge of language. It is therefore essential that our schools fill this gap in our children by first familiarizing them with oral French before teaching them to read in this same language, as is currently the case.

Today, apart from a few rare establishments where teaching is done in national languages, the learning of language and reading in French is done at the same time and this places our schoolchildren in a very difficult situation. The teaching of reading in French would benefit from being preceded by a significant phase of practice of the French language, gradually accompanied by some activities intended to raise awareness of the linguistic realities of this language: phonemes, words, sentences. To this language and linguistic activity would be added familiarization with the functions of writing and its social uses. Once this language practice is assured and awareness of the oral-written relationship has been initiated, we could move on to actually learning to read.

As long as we do not generalize teaching in national languages ​​and raise the question of the chronology of learning, our schoolchildren will continue to have enormous difficulties reading and writing in French. Speaking French must come before learning to read in this language. We learn to speak by speaking, which develops implicit competence. The teaching of reading and writing, that is to say explicit knowledge, should only take place following the development of implicit skills.

If we want to raise the learning level of the majority of Nigerien students, it is important to generalize bilingual education (mother tongues/French) and to modify the chronology of learning in primary school, in order to put oral skills before reading. and writing. Without such change, the quality of education in Niger will remain low.

March 14, 2015