An African child learning to read in English will face the same problems as an individual who is learning a new language. Language divergence is a crucial factor in learning and reading failure among school going children in Zambia. The more divergence there is between the dialect of a learner and the dialect of the learning, the more difficult will be the task of learning. The vernacular speaking child has to make correspondence between the forms he already controls both receptively and productively and the forms found in primary education as well as those used in teaching and reading instructions by the teacher. These differences in forms may be the most crucial for beginning literacy instructions during which the child is supposed to learn how to crack the code. Therefore, this study would give more valid reasons as to why using local languages as a medium of instruction is better than using English as a medium of instruction from grades one to four, respectively. The paper recommended that in order to help implement teaching in local languages, the government through the Ministry of General Education should train teachers in colleges on how to teach in local languages, the government through the Ministry of General Education should retrain teachers in local languages so that they can teach effectively, the teacher should be able to speak three to four languages so as to help implement local languages in schools.