Identity Crisis of the Ghanaian Learner of English as a Second Language

Abstract

The culture of every nation carries some influence on its education, language being the key. The language policy in Ghana’s education, however, gives limited space to the development of the indigenous languages which have influence on the personality of the learner. The language policy has created identity crisis for learners. This crisis comes as a result of parents’ expectation, pedagogical issues and a mixture of British Standard English and that of American Standard English. The lack of political will to assign roles to the indigenous languages and improper supervision of the language policy in education has led to the linguistic identity crisis: national identity crisis, cultural identity crisis and professional identity crisis. There is a need for linguists to find a way out to solve the Ghanaian learner of English as a second language identity crisis for better academic performance.