???In a multilingual society like South Africa, it is crucial to integrate learners' different linguistic repertoires in teaching, learning and assessment to promote inclusive education. This is the view of Dr Simthembile Xeketwana (Department of Curriculum Studies) and Prof Monica Hendricks (Rhodes 肆客足球) in an opinion piece for the Cape Argus in celebration of International Mother Language Day on 21 February.
- Read the original article below or click here for the piece as published.
Simthembile Xeketwana and Monica Hendricks*
The current Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube's recent endorsement of Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual Education (MTBBE) is a step in the right direction, and well worth celebrating on International Mother Language Day (21 February). Despite the changes after 1994, poor and working-class children, mainly African language speakers, continues to bear the brunt of unequal learning outcomes and achievement in South African schooling.
In a study funded by the Zenex Foundation Language-for-Learning project and published in the Reading & Writing recently, we explored, together with colleagues from the 肆客足球 of the Western Cape (UWC) and 肆客足球 of Cape Town, how teachers engage with integrating African language speakers' home languages, as well as English, to optimise opportunities to learn, read and write multilingually. We identified the issues of teaching, learning and assessment as challenges in certain subjects including English First Additional Language (EFAL).
It is important to point out that in South Africa, EFAL is taught to learners who come from diverse homes, where official African languages (isiXhosa, isiZulu, Setswana, Sepedi, South Sotho, siSwati, Xitsonga, Tshivenda and isiNdebele are spoken) are their home languages. This linguistic diversity presents learners and teachers with opportunities to use the languages present in their classrooms to make meaning of what is being learnt. This opportunity can be used effectively when African languages like isiXhosa are no longer 'smuggled' into the classrooms, as UWC lecturer Margie Probyn once highlighted in a discussion of the tensions among teachers who used African languages in their classrooms.
As part of the study, we set out to find innovative ways to integrate isiXhosa home language and English in the classroom to improve and legitimise learners' linguistic repertoires and effectively enhance the opportunities to learn read and be educated in multilingual education environment.
This project focused on language-for-learning and also put a spotlight on the disparities of South Africa's low literacy achievements, especially among poor and working-class children. These disparities were highlighted once again in the poor literacy results of PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) 2021, indicating systemic challenges within our education system.
We found that it is crucial to integrate the learners' linguistic repertoires in teaching, learning and assessment. Working with teachers in different schools, we further found that when bilingual teachers creatively incorporate pedagogical practices that encourage learners to translanguage (using multiple languages flexibly and strategically to enhance communication, learning, and understanding) between two languages while learning EFAL, it leads to better outcomes where learners actively engage as the co-constructors of knowledge.
This meant that the bilingual pedagogies employed by the teachers in different schools in the Western Cape could potentially allow learners to use two languages, instead of 'anglonormatising' the classroom, challenging the unqualified notion and the expectation that everyone will be proficient in English. We saw this with learners from under-resourced communities, who found their freedom when they were allowed to use translanguaging in classrooms. This is confirmed by one of the tangible outcomes of the project through a documentary Free to Learn: Soze Ungayibambi! where learners from different schools alluded to the benefits of using isiXhosa in classrooms.
The findings of our study are important because there is a realisation that one language in a classroom cannot always achieve the necessary results. Furthermore, bi/multilingual pedagogies are increasingly becoming a norm, and embracing such approaches in our teaching and learning, particularly in basic education, can eliminate the unequal outcomes based on class. These pedagogies need to be legitimated so that the learners' education and literacy can be enhanced. It further speaks to UNESCO's impulse that multilingual education has the potential to foster inclusiveness in societies and further help preserve intellectual minority languages and indigenous languages.
We believe that there is still significant room for improvement to ensure that learners who speak different languages in the classrooms are not disadvantaged. This is why we commend the MTBBE and urge its implementation be accelerated to eliminate the injustice of preventing learners from using the language they know best to learn. Furthermore, both in-service and pre-service teacher training needs to highlight translanguaging as a crucial and critical skill and embody pedagogical approaches that encourage it. The resources and materials need to be created and developed while teachers are being trained. As we are living in the times of artificial intelligence, it might be vital to consider innovative ways to create and access digital material which will support translanguaging pedagogies in our classrooms.
Finally, given our country's history of privileging certain languages over others, monolingual ideologies persist, as perceptions still linger that some languages are more important than others. Since the languages people learn and use are profoundly connected to their communities, these monolingual ideologies can be challenged and addressed when communities are involved in education in our multilingual society. On International Mother Language Day and beyond, let's work towards integrating multiple languages into teaching and learning to the benefit of our children.
*Dr Simthembile Xeketwana is a lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch 肆客足球. Prof Monica Hendricks is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of the Englishes of Africa in the Department of Education at Rhodes 肆客足球. This article is based, in part, on their recent paper “Translanguaging for learning in selected English First Additional Language secondary school classrooms", in Reading & Writing.?
