Teaching Mandarin in schools is another slap in the face for African languages
- Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Nosilela, Bulelwa , Heugh, Kathleen , Hendricks, Monica , Maseko, Pamela
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67042 , vital:29023 , https://theconversation.com/teaching-mandarin-in-schools-is-another-slap-in-the-face-for-african-languages-48505
- Description: publisher version , It’s said that behind every powerful language is an army and money. Consider the case of English. In South Africa, as in its other colonies, the British arrived with the Bible in one hand and the breech-loader in the other. Behind them was the English language, military might and money. British missionaries wanted to convert Africa’s indigenous “heathens” to Christianity; to clone little English people on the continent through the medium of English. Next came the Afrikaners, descended from the Dutch. Their slaves created a “kitchen” language out of Dutch and called it Afrikaans. White Afrikaners appropriated it as their own and it became the language of apartheid. One of the tipping points of white rule was the 1976 Soweto uprising – a furious, powerful response to the news that Afrikaans would become a compulsory medium of instruction. Now there is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in the country’s schools as a Second Additional Language. This new government policy will see African languages bumped even further down the educational pecking order.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
Grade-appropriate literacy and South African grade seven learners' classroom writing in English
- Authors: Hendricks, Monica
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7019 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007173 , https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430600989593
- Description: preprint , This paper reports on the writing of grade 7 learners in English as an additional language at four differently-resourced schools in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Because grade 7 is the start of the senior phase of schooling, it is vital that learners achieve grade-level competence in the language used as medium of instruction. Learning outcome five which states that ‘the learner will be able to use language to think and reason, as well as access, process and use information for learning’ (Department of Education 2002) is particularly relevant. The primary research question asked what the writing practices in grade 7 additional languages were, and how these contribute to the development of learners’ writing. The findings were that literacy practices at all four schools privilege grammar exercises and personal, expressive writing. In terms of Cummins’s (1984) constructs of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skill) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), learners’ written competencies are mainly conversational (BICS). The personal expressive texts which predominate in learners’ writing have done little to develop a formal, impersonal academic register (CALP). Learners need to become familiar with the more abstract impersonal factual genres associated with disciplinary-based knowledge.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009