Measurement of the Bilingual Abilities of the Bira People of Upper Zaire Province

Abstract

The purpose of this research project was two fold: The researcher wanted to determine whether or not the Bible Swahili is adequately intelligible to the Bira people who speak oral local Swahili not standardized and then to respond to the question of the inadequacy of testing bilingualism using one technique. It was established that bilingualism testing should involve evaluating several aspects of a bilingual situation or language proficiency to have an overall picture of its total evaluation. During this study an overall evaluation of the Bira bilingual situation was accomplished through a combination of a set of six bilingualism measurement tech- niques to determine the bilingual abilities of the Bira in Swahili and Kibira. Thus the following techniques were combined: the Sentence Repetition Test, Scriptures Comprehension Test, Translation Test, a Written Leaders' Questionnaire, Observation Method and Functional Oral Interviews (or Informal Oral Interviews). The researcher aimed at determining which of these six methods was a best method or best combination in evaluating bilingual ability or language proficiency. He evaluated a sample of 240 Bira. He found that: 1. No one method alone can give an overall bilingual situation or language proficiency evaluation, 2. None of these methods was the best because each of them evaluated some- thing different, thus they were complementary, 3. It is indispensable to combine several methods in a study of language profi- ciency or bilingual ability evaluation in order to have an accurate evalua tion 4. From the performances of these 240 Bira evaluated, the majority of the Bira population were estimated not to be highly proficient in Standard Swahili and not highly bilingual. The Bible Swahili is not intelligible to the majority of the Bira, therefore there is a definite need for a Bible translation into Kibira to help the Bira under- stand the Scriptures wheel. In this report, the researcher made suggestions and recommendations to solve the problems tackled in this study. He feels that other language surveyors and language policy makers will find the results of this study very significant, benefi- cial and useful.