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<h2 class="gmail-title"><a href="http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/28/theres-a-social-justice-agenda-that-gets-and-keeps-me-passionate-about-this-work-a-qa-with-lara-krause-language-activist-and-phd-researcher-into-mother-tongue-education/">“There’s
a social justice agenda that gets and keeps me passionate about this
work” – a Q&A with Lara Krause, language activist and PhD researcher
into mother tongue education</a></h2>
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by Mila on May 28th, 2018 <span class="gmail-quick_share">
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<p><em>Published in the Sunday World: 27 May 2018; Daily Dispatch: 28 May 2018; Herald: 31 May 2018</em>)</p>
<p><strong>By Carla Lever</strong></p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/pOEc9vX.jpg" alt="" height="400"></div>
<div align="center">Lara Krause, language activist and PhD researcher into mother tongue education. Photo supplied.</div>
<p> <br>
<strong>You’ve specialised in language and education in South Africa for many years now. What gets you so passionate about these topics?</strong></p>
<p>It’s always struck me that something as universal as language, which
was never an obstacle in my own education, can make life so difficult
for millions of children at school. So there’s a social justice agenda
that gets and keeps me passionate about this work. I’m also excited by
the idea of debating what language really is – what counts as a ‘proper’
language and what gets dismissed as unacceptable or informal. </p>
<p><strong>There is a big and important movement fighting for access to
mother tongue education, but your research suggests it’s a complicated
issue. Why is that?</strong></p>
<p>Well, one issue is that South Africa is a country where most children
grow up speaking more than one neat language category – they mix
isiZulu, English, isiXhosa and maybe Afrikaans as a normal part of
everyday life. They communicate just as efficiently as everyone else –
perhaps more efficiently! – but what is their mother tongue? It shows
the shortcomings of our thinking.</p>
<p><strong>Can you give us some practical examples where school language policy doesn’t always help children?</strong> </p>
<p>Well, the numbers used in everyday isiXhosa are mostly adapted from
English – the formal isiXhosa words for numbers are almost never used.
When children learn maths in ‘mother tongue’, though, they are often
taught standard isiXhosa words for numbers – words that are actually
foreign to them! This sometimes has children being marked down in tests
if, for example, they can’t write a number like 153 out in standard
isiXhosa words. These children can often count and work with numbers
perfectly well – it’s just that the words they know are not acknowledged
because they don’t fit into one language category. That’s not a failure
of thinking, it’s a failure of policy. </p>
<p><strong>In your experience, what creative things are teachers doing in practice to help students with this?</strong></p>
<p>Teachers work a lot with visual aids, I find. Even though resources
are often hard to come by, they print posters, bring pictures or
postcards to continuously illustrate what is being spoken about. I’ve
also seen teachers physically act out vocabulary that they are teaching
and integrating little jokes to make learners remember things better.
I’ve been really impressed by the creativity teachers bring under very
difficult circumstances!</p>
<p><strong>Obviously it’s important that we turn around our literacy
rates in South Africa. Do you think a more flexible approach to language
use might help with this?</strong></p>
<p>Yes! If I could decide, I would relax language restrictions when it
comes to writing in content subjects in primary school. Children should
be free to use whichever language resources they have to show their
knowledge. We should also stop worrying so much about teachers mixing
languages in the classroom – research suggests it’s one of the most
efficient ways of helping students understand. We should legitimise and
support any practices which help our children learn and develop a love
of using language to express themselves. As they are exposed to standard
ways of saying and writing things in the books they read, children
absorb the formal rules if they’re allowed to grow into them.</p>
<p><strong>You’ve done some work with picture stories to see how
children naturally write. Can you tell us about why you did this and
what you discovered?</strong> </p>
<p>I wanted to see how children choose to write if they are allowed to
use any mix of languages they like. It looks as if children write more
courageously and freely when not restricted to ‘one language’. This data
is my current project so the insights are not very detailed yet. </p>
<p><strong>How can parents and communities best support children to
become curious, creative readers and thinkers? Are there any tips you’d
give on supporting how children close to us talk and write?</strong></p>
<p>I think it would be great to start early to expose children to
different types of texts. Reading books together with children and
talking about them is incredibly valuable and conducive to any sort of
learning activity. However, if books are not always at hand, a whatsapp
message with lots of emojis that mom just got from dad can be turned
into a resource for learning about reading, writing and creativity as
well, just like the writings on the wall of the spaza shop and the
lyrics of children’s favorite songs. </p>
<p><em>From Sunday April 15, <a href="http://nalibali.org/" target="_blank" class="gmail-in-content-link">Nal’ibali</a>
will be publishing its supplements in two new languages. An
English-Setswana edition will be published in the Sunday World in the
North West, and an English-Xitsonga edition will be donated to reading
clubs in Limpopo. Clubs in both provinces will collect their copies from
select post offices. The post offices (10 in each province) will also
have 50 additional editions each to give away to member of the public.</em></p>
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<br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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