A Project by the English Academy of Southern Africa
For some years now, the English Academy of Southern Africa has been mooting the idea of producing a magazine for English teachers. The older teachers might recall a publication entitled CRUX, which English teachers valued greatly. Since its demise, there has been nothing to replace it. So, at last, the Academy has launched this publication to fill the gap. This was made possible through a generous donation from the Donaldson Trust.
I don’t believe that it is just bias on my part which makes me believe that the most hard-driven teachers in our schools are our language teachers. From one point of view, they are better off because they have always had a huge marking load and were therefore not fazed, as other teachers were, by having to do Continuous Assessment (CASS); but the demands of the new curriculum have taken this to new heights.
I’d like you to imagine the following: A businessperson or teacher or journalist is required to write a report or prepare a lesson. She will be given one hour to do this task, with no access to shared ideas, dictionaries or the internet, and not even Microsoft and Bill Gates. She will not have time to do the work in rough, certainly no time to edit, and scarcely even time to do adequate proofreading. Oh, and by the way, she will be writing this during the graveyard session from 2 – 3 pm after doing a similar, though longer, exercise in the morning. That is what we are demanding of our young learners since the curriculum experts, in their wisdom, reinstated the writing paper as part of the FET exam process
11 April 2010 saw the formation of a professional association of English teachers in the Eastern Cape. The Association, which has been two years in the planning, was launched at the ‘Networking’ conference hosted by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University (9-11 April). This article sets out to explore the need for such an association, and to consider the possible benefits it holds for members, for education management structures in the province and, indeed, for the nation. If the Eastern Cape has taken a lead in this regard, it may be worth teachers in other provinces considering the educational gains such organizations might offer in the struggle to improve the quality of education offered to our learners.
Through the use of examples of classroom discourse from three different classrooms in rural Eastern Cape schools, this paper highlights the difference between a teacher who uses students’ talk as an ‘instructional resource’ and two teachers who dominate the classroom discourse by themselves for the most part of the instructional time.
Madeyandile Mbelani Madeyandile Mbelani is a research officer and PhD candidate in the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. His MEd dissertation is an action research case study on ‘Making visual literacy meaningful in a rural context’. (m.mbelani@ru.ac.za) This paper reports outcomes from a workshop on cartoons that took place […]
Many years ago I decided something had to be done about the scrappy, incomplete and useless literature notebooks belonging to my weaker pupils. Every year it was the same story. The year would start off well: logical, legible notes would be written in the first two, or maybe three, pages but gradually, as books were left at home or someone was absent or the day was hot and I was boring, the notes descended into chaos. And yet these pupils were not trying to be difficult. What to do? After much reading and thinking I decided that I had to spend more time with the pupils formatting these books.
Many years ago I decided something had to be done about the scrappy, incomplete and useless literature notebooks belonging to my weaker pupils. Every year it was the same story. The year would start off well: logical, legible notes would be written in the first two, or maybe three, pages but gradually, as books were left at home or someone was absent or the day was hot and I was boring, the notes descended into chaos. And yet these pupils were not trying to be difficult. What to do? After much reading and thinking I decided that I had to spend more time with the pupils formatting these books.
How may the study of Shakespearean play be undertaken in the time available in a First-Language classroom?
‘Motivate,’ meaning ‘to give reasons for’ is a South Africanism that is, perhaps, a little too well established. It comes from the Afrikaans ‘om te motiveer’. In the rest of the English-speaking world, ‘to motivate’ is to impart a sense of enthusiasm or a desire to get things done. South Africans should be aware that local usage could cause confusion elsewhere.
