Summary
Key findings
- Children whose home language sounds more like the language of instruction score higher in listening comprehension: each one-point increase in phonetic similarity (on a 0–100 scale) raises the score by about 3.7% of the average score for similarity with French and 2.5% for similarity with English.
- The effects are larger in Francophone schools, for pupils in rural areas (roughly twice the urban effect or more) and for those who read at home or get homework help from parents; children with no homework help do not benefit significantly.
- Higher similarity with French appears to narrow gaps in low-performing areas such as Mayo-Louti and Vina, while gains from similarity with English are significant in only a few provinces.
- The study recommends policies that take home languages into account in the early grades, such as dual-language materials and teacher training in multilingual teaching.
Methodology & context
- Uses 2019 Early Grade Reading Assessment data for 459 Grade 3 pupils in eight regions (the North-West and South-West were not surveyed because of conflict), with a phonetic similarity score comparing 164 common words across 15 major Cameroonian languages with French and English.
- Two-stage least squares: similarity is instrumented with distances to cities where the language of instruction is widely spoken (Yaoundé and Douala for French; Buea and Bamenda for English), with pupil and household controls and province fixed effects; this assumes distance affects learning only through language similarity.
- Cameroon has more than 270 languages, but public schools teach only in French and English; in 2019, 60.6% of Grade 2 pupils were below the minimum proficiency level in the language of instruction.
Summary drafted with AI from the AFEP working paper and policy brief, and checked against them. See the full study for details.
Abstract
Over the past decades, early childhood education policies have shifted focus from access to learning quality, acknowledging that school attendance is insufficient when children do not understand the language of instruction (LOI). This paper examines the impact of linguistic similarity between students’ home languages (L1) and the LOI on early literacy skills in Cameroon, a multilingual country with over 270 living languages. Using the 2019 Early Grade Reading Assessment data and lexicostatistics, I construct a quantitative measure of phonetic similarity between 15 major indigenous languages and the two official LOIs, French and English. I then employ the two-stage least squares method to examine the effect of linguistic similarity on foundational skills. The results show that greater phonetic similarity significantly improves listening comprehension, particularly within the Francophone education system. The effects are also more pronounced among students who receive reading support from parents or siblings, suggesting that home literacy environments reinforce the benefits of linguistic proximity. Additionally, phonetic similarity appears to mitigate learning disadvantages in less privileged regions. These findings underscore the importance of integrating linguistic alignment into language-in-education policies to strengthen early learning outcomes and advance equity in multilingual contexts.