[lg policy] South Africa: Multilingualism in Class: a Transformation Strategy?

Mon May 7 14:39:11 UTC 2012

Multilingualism in Class: a Transformation Strategy?
4 May 2012

Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba (Multilingualism Education
Project, Centre for Higher Education Development)

In this article, Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba of the
Multilingualism Education Project reflects on a recent seminar on
multilingual education, and on UCT's language policy.

"UCT has done a great deal to embrace the cultural and linguistic
diversity of its students and staff, but do we still see a gap between
policy and practice when it comes to approaches to teaching?"

This was a question posed by Associate Professor Adam Haupt at a
seminar I recently attended, organised by the Humanities
Transformation Committee. Professor Haupt further raised questions
about the effects of the exclusive use of English in the classroom on
(diverse) students' experiences of the university and their academic
achievement.

As head of the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) in UCT's Centre
for Higher Education Development and a member of the university's
language policy committee, this was a discussion of particular
interest to me. To my mind, the current university language policy,
although it opens up agentive and implementation spaces for
multilingualism in the classroom, falls short of transforming what I
consider the historically entrenched English monolingual ideology in
the university.

Since its establishment, UCT promoted the English-only policy and as
such its language policy casts a long historical shadow of this
Englishness. According to Professor Martin Hall, former deputy
vice-chancellor at UCT, this policy was designed to suit the needs of
"a homogenous community (overwhelmingly white, predominantly male,
English speaking, economically privileged)".

But, this policy is now challenged by the new linguistic and racial
diversity in the institution. Against this backdrop, the university
developed its new language policy in 1999 and revised it in 2003 to
meet the demands of the new and changed linguistic environment.

My fellow panellists - Dr Jacques De Wet of the Department of
Sociology and Dr Musa Ndlovu of the Centre for Film & Media Studies -
gave different reflections on this policy.

Dr De Wet began by referring to the current language policy and its
objective, which is to further "the promotion of multilingual
awareness and proficiency". The policy also links to "the need to
prepare students to participate fully in a multilingual society".
Furthering the promotion of multilingual awareness and proficiency,
the policy states that "all academic programme convenors and teachers
will be required ....to explore and implement ways in which these aims
may be achieved through the undergraduate and postgraduate programme
structures".

However, according to Dr De Wet, if we accept the policy then we need
to ask: What are the consequences, at the point of policy
implementation, for teaching practices in the classroom and in
tutorials?

This is a crucial question in view of the fact that although the
university has adopted the multilingual language policy, its
implementation in teaching and learning poses several challenges. The
first challenge is an ideological one.

UCT needs to critically rethink its traditional approach to language
use in class. There is a need to forge new multilingual pedagogies
that promote inclusivity and active participation of all students in
the learning process. Paying particular attention to language use in
the classroom is therefore crucial, in the sense that if we are not
careful, this is where the goals of transformation could be promoted
or undermined.

As former vice-chancellor Professor Njabulo S Ndebele pointed out in
his Living Transformation document, "What goes on in the lecture
rooms, seminar rooms and laboratories is most probably at the heart of
the goals of transformation." According to him, the classroom is the
social space where "institutional practices are handed down as well as
challenged by historic change".

The past few years have seen an increased tension between students'
observable daily multilingual life experience outside class, and the
exclusive use of English in the classroom. To overcome this tension, a
language-use complementarity approach, which promotes both the use of
English and students' primary languages, could be implemented at
curriculum and course levels.

In the Faculty of Health Sciences, for example, students are taught
through the medium of English, but are also required to learn isiXhosa
or Afrikaans as an additional language. This multilingual curriculum
model can be easily implemented in other professional disciplines such
as law, education, psychology and social development.

Other additional language courses may be offered outside the normal
curriculum. MEP, for example, offers non-credit-bearing short language
courses such as the Xhosa Communication skills course to enrich
students' curriculum and knowledge base. At course level,
multilingualism can be implemented by employing multilingual tutors
and providing multilingual tutorials. Multilingual learning materials
such as glossaries may also go a long way in enhancing multilingual
learning.

MEP is currently developing the multilingual concept literacy
glossaries that are aimed at providing academic support to students
for whom English is not a first language. As the glossaries are in
English and all the other ten official languages of South Africa, they
cater for the conceptual and linguistic needs of the majority of South
African students.

Dr Ndlovu concluded the seminar by giving more concrete examples on
how multilingualism can be used effectively to prepare students for
their future careers such as being media practitioners. He cited, for
example, how teaching students multilingualism can prepare them for
professions such as journalism and multilingual script writing.

He referred to recent research showing a growing demand for
journalists able to write for newspapers in African languages, and
includes publications such as Ilanga and the isiZulu version of Sunday
Times. The critical question he concluded with is: Is UCT is producing
students with linguistic resources that enable them to function
effectively in a multilingual society?. Full podcast.

http://www.uct.ac.za/print/dailynews/?id=8107
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