Teaching and Learning Hausa Language Through Proverbs

Abstract

In Hausa pedagogy, various genres of literature e.g. proverbs are exploited methodologically in order to make teaching and learning more realistic, interesting, and effective. Thus, the importance of teaching and learning Hausa language through proverbs cannot be overemphasized. Against this background, this article examines Hausa Proverbs as used in the teaching and learning space, highlighting the pragmatic significance thereof for effective pedagogy as perceived by a select group of students. Some of the Hausa proverbs examined are drawn from thematic fields of Hausa worldview like peace (zaman lafiya, knowledge (ilimi), honesty/truth/objectivity (himma + kwazo), caution (taka-tsantsan), resoluteness (himma), goodness/virtuosity (nagarta + kirki), etc. The paper adopts the quantitative descriptive research design, and involves a sample of fifty-two (52) students of the B.A. (Education) Hausa programme of Kaduna State University, Kaduna, Nigeria. An eight-item structured questionnaire was adopted as instrument to generate the required primary data of the research. Accordingly, respondents’ perception regarding the pedagogic significance of the proverbs is analyzed using the simple descriptive statistics, highlighting the distributions by frequencies and percentages. Results show that majority of the focused students agree that proverbs are veritable tools for facilitating the effective teaching and learning of Hausa language.