Arlys van Wyk (photo: provided)
South Africa has been through much historical turmoil to shake colonialism and apartheid, but the yoke of language divisions has, in many ways, resisted transformation. Thanks to a stocktaking research project on mother-tongue education in sub-Saharan Africa (Alidou et al 2006) we have some insight into the negative effects of monolingual approaches to education in multilingual settings in Africa. This and other research demonstrate the devastation caused by the movement away from mother-tongue education in South Africa. Wolff (2006) points out: “Language is not everything in education but without language, everything is nothing in education.”
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Thanks to a stocktaking research project on mother-tongue education in sub-Saharan Africa (Alidou et al 2006) we have some insight into the negative effects of monolingual approaches to education in multilingual settings in Africa. This and other research demonstrate the devastation caused by the movement away from mother-tongue education in South Africa. Wolff (2006) points out: “Language is not everything in education but without language, everything is nothing in education.”
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As a member of the Language Committee responsible for the language policy revision at the University of the Free State (UFS) I have experienced the uncertainties, implementation dilemmas, emotions and general turmoil first-hand. The role of language in education is little understood by many, academics included, and the impact of language policy decisions on the second-language learner is often not the focus when decisions about policy are made.
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In this country, mother-tongue speakers of indigenous languages at school follow an early exit model where English is introduced at the age of nine years. This means that many are exposed to a foreign language before they have gained the academic language proficiency necessary for epistemological access.
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In this country, mother-tongue speakers of indigenous languages at school follow an early exit model where English is introduced at the age of nine years. This means that many are exposed to a foreign language before they have gained the academic language proficiency necessary for epistemological access. There is a fundamental difference between the everyday spoken language and the language needed for learning. Academic language proficiency is developed gradually over a period of 6–8 years in the content areas where vocabulary, conceptual knowledge, and grammatical and discourse knowledge are acquired (Cummins 2009). This knowledge constitutes far more than what is required for everyday spoken communication. Students who enter higher education without the required academic language proficiency are set for a struggle. Once students join a university, they become members of an academic community where they acquire a new “discourse” which is nobody’s mother tongue (Bourdieu and Passeron 2006). For many students who lack the necessary academic language proficiency to master this new discourse, academic access is daunting.
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Students who enter higher education without the required academic language proficiency are set for a struggle. Once students join a university, they become members of an academic community where they acquire a new “discourse” which is nobody’s mother tongue ...
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What has the above got to do with language policy making? Everything. Students who are enrolled and struggle with the above will need help and an inclusive language policy needs to include these accommodations. Engstrom and Tinto (2008) emphasise that “Access without support is not opportunity.”
Unlike the UFS, where Afrikaans enrolments had dwindled to 20% at the time of the policy revision, the University of Stellenbosch has an opportunity to demonstrate inclusivity of the multilingual environment where they are situated and not to follow a reductionist approach of monolingualism.
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Unlike the UFS, where Afrikaans enrolments had dwindled to 20% at the time of the policy revision, the University of Stellenbosch has an opportunity to demonstrate inclusivity of the multilingual environment where they are situated and not to follow a reductionist approach of monolingualism.
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Diversity and multilingualism should be embraced as a means of preparing students for increasing global diversity and academic access. All South Africans have, to greater or lesser degrees, a multilingual repertoire. Our languages are not isolated and separate from one another. We mingle and use our languages horizontally. Kathleen Heugh (2016) puts it this way: “There is almost no way that we can keep classrooms, teaching and learning environments artificially monolingual. Each of us makes metacognitive multilingual repertoires as we engage with reading, thinking, listening, and writing.” She goes on to say that we should use this multilingualism to our advantage to support our students.
Many institutions profess multilingualism, and efforts of this are in evidence, but how much real success has there been? Are we simply paying lip service to a multilingual approach while it is business as usual in a monolingual language?
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Diversity and multilingualism should be embraced as a means of preparing students for increasing global diversity and academic access. All South Africans have, to greater or lesser degrees, a multilingual repertoire. Our languages are not isolated and separate from one another.
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Kathleen Heugh was invited to the UFS campus for her expert input. She suggested the following six practical ways in which we could implement a multilingual approach that would empower students in the teaching and learning situation. I conclude this article with her useful list:
- Provide the best possible environment for students to learn by drawing on their whole linguistic repertoire – which means what they know and how they can use this knowledge in the languages that they have gathered this knowledge. This may involve bilingualism/multilingualism and translanguaging.
- Make the best use of the linguistic, ontological and epistemological expertise of our teaching and research staff.
- Provide optimal opportunities for students to engage productively with diversity –linguistically, ontologically and epistemologically.
- Ensure that students and teachers are able to exchange their knowledges and expertise in respectful and reciprocal ways (eg in tutorial classes; adjusting assessment criteria to draw on northern and southern epistemologies/ways of seeing through other eyes; cf Andreotti and De Souza 2008).
- We need to establish how scholars who are engaged in lexicographical or other language development activities are making the best use of the resources that students bring to the university – for example, in negotiating meaning in Sesotho and languages in addition to Afrikaans and English at UFS. We need to establish the extent to which teaching staff are able to use their own multilingualism to teach students.
- We need to consider the extent to which we engage with changes in school education policy in order to smooth the disparities and inequities that continue in that domain – particularly in relation to building strong linguistic and epistemological repertoires of knowledge that students bring to the universities.
Adapted from: Heugh, K. 2016. Multilingualism and diversity: a global challenge, “southern expertise”, and how do South African universities respond now?
- Alidou, H., Aliou, B., Brock-Uttne, B., Diallo, Y.S., Heugh, K. and Wolff, E. 2006. Optimizing learning and education in Africa-the language factor. A stock-taking research on mother tongue and bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa. adeanet.org/binnial-2006/doc/document/B3_en.pdf
- Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and symbolic power. In J.B. Thompson (Ed). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Engstrom, C. and Tinto, V. 2008 Access without support is not opportunity. In Change January/February.
- Wolff, E. Background and history-language politics and planning in Africa. In Alidou, H., Aliou, B., Brock-Uttne, B., Diallo, Y.S, Heugh, K. and Wolff, E. 2006. Optimizing learning and education in Africa-the language factor. A stock-taking research on mother tongue and bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa. adeanet.org/binnial-2006/doc/document/B3_en.pdf
Also read:
Robert Greig on the language debate at Stellenbosch University
Afrikaans oorleef by US solank dit "redelikerwys doenlik" is
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