The Role of Mother Tongue Based Education in Ensuring the Quality of Classroom Instruction: Opportunities and Challenges

While there are many factors involved in delivering quality basic education, language is clearly the key to communication and understanding in the classroom. Many developing countries, including Ethiopia, are characterized societal multilingualism; yet continue to allow a single foreign language to dominate the education sector. However, the issues of mother tongues should be underlined as we look for quality of education in the grass root level. Therefore, this paper highlights important issues in mother tongue education such as arguments in the using of mother tongue for classroom instruction, role of mother tongue for second language learning in Ethiopian context, various countries experiences in the benefits of mother tongue based education and the role of mother tongue education in maintaining quality of education. Eventually, it forwards recommendations which should be considered in further actions.