Mother Tongue

An individual's mother tongue is a means for a person to participate in the knowledge

of the social work. Another influence of the mother tongue is that it causes the reflection and

learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. It is, in fact, in charge of

differentiating the linguistic competence of acting. Language is the most impressive

instrument in the progress of any human being. It is the greatest asset we possess. A good

understanding of language is equal with a sound ability to think. In other words, language and

thought cannot be separated. Language has an important part in supporting personDs identity

and in helping people understand where they fit in the new environment. The acquisition of

language is essential not only to personDs cognitive development, but also to their social

development and wellbeing. The early years are recognized as the foundation years for

personDs development. In particular, the first six years are crucial for young children in

developing their first language and cultural identity, and it is during these early years that

children build up their knowledge of the world around them (Clarke, 2009).

All the praise that is heaped on the languages as an educational tool is due in double measure

to the mother tongue, which should be called the ‘Mother of Languages’ in which every new

language can only be established by comparison with it. Therefore, the mother tongue is, for

all school subjects including foreign language learners, a child’s strongest ally and should be

used systematically.

With using the mother tongue, we have

(1) Learnt to think,

(2) Learnt to communicate and

(3) Acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar.

The mother tongue is therefore the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language

learning and provides a Language Acquisition Support System (Butzkamm, 2003).