Eva Yerendé

Eva Yerende is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. She holds a doctorate from the University of Arizona at Tucson, and her research focuses on issues related to language education, primarily in Guinea-Conakry. (e.yerende@ru.ac.za)

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 (55 minutes). The snapshots used in this discussion form part of a series of classroom observations done in the course of teacher training activities organized by the ISEA at Rhodes University. All three teachers are affiliated with the ISEA as current or former students on an innovative ACE program delivered over the course of two years through on-site and off-campus courses. Also, all three teachers work in the same school district but at different campuses (Cases 1 and 2 in Senior Secondary Schools and Case 3 in a Junior Secondary School).

Case 1:  Leading a discussion

Example #1

In a lesson that introduces for the first time Maya Angelou’s poem On Aging, the teacher uses one particular line from the poem ‘Don’t pity me!’ to engage students in a discussion about intergenerational differences and relationships.

-T.  says:  ‘ Don’t pity me!’ and every time at the end of this statement, she asks the students:  ‘What does it mean?  What does this phrase mean?’

-Students mumble possible answers among themselves in their groups but nobody volunteers to speak up to the whole class

-T. answers the question herself:  ‘She doesn’t need anyone’s pity or sympathy.’

Just before the instructional time comes to an end as the teacher starts talking about homework, a student raises his hand and says:  You are telling us that we should not pity our elders but then how should I feel when my grandma cannot go to the bathroom by herself and asks me for help?  Shouldn’t I pity her?’

The teacher welcomes the comment and responds to it on her own reiterating some of the information she has already presented. Then she moves on to discuss the homework for next time.

Case  2:  Presenting Information

Example #1

In the course of a poetry lesson that uses Sandile Dikeni’s Love poem for my country, the teacher asks the students to pay attention to the figurative language of the poem.  The teacher reads with emphasis the following line from Dikeni’s poem ‘… deep under the bowels of soil’ and the following exchange with the whole class ensues:

-T. asks:  ‘Which place is the bowel of the soil?  I want to see a hand!  Where are the bowels of the soil? ‘

-Students giggle and mumble

-T. answers:  ‘They are under the soil; when you go down; but the soil does not have bowel; it is a figurative speech; what is figurative speech? It is a meta _____?’  Teacher raises her voice but does not complete the question; she waits for the students to do that.

-Students don’t respond

-T. completes her phrase and writes the word ‘metaphor’ on the board.

Example #2

-T. asks:  ‘We say that alliteration is if the author has used the same ______?’

-Students wait for her to complete her phrase

-T. says:  ‘… the same consonants’; then she proceeds to identify examples of alliteration from the text.

Example #3

-T. asks: ‘If we look at rhythm, this poem doesn’t have a clear ___________?’

-Students wait for her to complete her phrase

-Teacher says ‘rhythm’.

Case  3: Facilitating Interpersonal Communication

Example #1

The excerpts that follow are part of a poetry lesson on Shakespeare’s sonnet, ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’. The teacher uses handouts with copies of Shakespeare’s sonnet that include the title of the sonnet but not Shakespeare’s name.  Students have been asked to work in groups to discuss the difference between ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ love. At the end of the group discussion, the teacher calls each group to share with the whole class their understanding of the two terms:

-The speaker of one of the groups stands up and says: ‘Ma’m, according to my understanding, ….’

-T. interrupts her to say: ‘Yes!  I like that!’

-And the student goes on to finish her sentence by saying  ‘…  love when is conditional comes with limits!’

Example #2

The teacher has asked students to work in groups to decide if the sonnet they are studying is an Elizabethan or an Italian sonnet using information already presented in previous lessons.  At the end of the group discussions, the speaker of each group reports to the whole class the outcome of their discussion.

-The speaker of one of the groups stands up and says: ‘We, in the Achievers Group, have decided that this sonnet is Elizabethan…,’ and he proceeds to say how his group arrived at this conclusion.

Leading a Discussion

In the first Case, the teacher uses a relatively easy text and a series of provocative questions along with body language and an emphatic recitation style to engage students into a discussion about old age.  Prior to that, pre-reading activities had been used with this group of 12^th-graders to brainstorm words related to aging, compassion, pity, and different ways of caring for old people in the cities and in the rural areas. Then the lesson moved into a reading aloud activity as a precursor to a class discussion that took almost one third of the instructional time. This was a well-organized lesson plan that failed to ‘take off.’ What the teacher has planned as a discussion plays out as a monologue in which the teacher answers her own questions and prompts. It is only at the end of the instructional time that finally one of the students takes the stand to challenge the teacher with a question that reveals a communicative competency that exceeds the expectations of the teacher. Ironically, the student succeeds in engaging the teacher in a discussion on the paradoxes of old age but the teacher fails to ‘share the talk’ and use the student’s question to meet the language objectives of her lesson plan. By answering the question herself, she compromises the last opportunity that she has to open up the floor and let the students do the talking.

Intonation and Student Participation

The teacher in Case 2 models an intonation style often used in classrooms where the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) is an additional language. This intonation style functions more like an ‘accommodation’ technique to enhance student understanding of what the teacher says and less as a learning strategy to enable students’ talk in authentic and substantive interactions. Specifically, the teacher uses what appear to be pseudo-questions as prompts to elicit student participation. The teacher raises her voice as she forms the first part of the question and then waits for the students to complete the second part. Her expectation is that the students will use the clues provided in the first part of the question to predict plausible answers. But as we see, in all three examples in Case 2, the teacher answers her own prompts either because the students (10^th-graders) are not challenged enough to participate in this teacher-centered activity, or because they expect the teacher to give them the right answer based on their prior experiences as students in classrooms where pseudo-questions instead of authentic questions dominate the classroom discourse. As in Case 1, the classroom discourse is dominated by the teacher’s voice and prompts. Questions and answers form the backbone of a lesson plan that places the teacher in the front stage of the class, converting her into a human magnet to attract the students’ attention with various rates of success in the span of the instructional time (55 minutes).

Code-Switching and Student Participation

In Case 3, instead of using pseudo-questions, the teacher is using project-related questions that the students address in small group discussions capitalizing upon their combined expertise: linguistic, cultural, and subject-related knowledge built incrementally from one lesson to the next. This is not the first time that these students (9^th-graders) have worked on this particular text and certainly it is not the first time that they have rehearsed in front of the class expressions such as ‘According to my understanding…’ and ‘We, in the Achievers Group, have decided that …’.  What exactly enables this teacher to achieve this type of student’s talk and use it to foster interpersonal communication and substantive engagement with a demanding text that is far more difficult than the texts used in the other two cases?

A close examination of the teacher’s interventions in Case 3 reveals additional linguistic resources that the teacher is able to use to establish a ‘community of practice’ where learning tasks are completed in stages, building upon the input of ‘achieving’ and ‘less achieving’ students.  Through the use of ‘strategic code-switching’ in small group discussions, students are able to work out plausible answers to their queries and rehearse them, in a non-threatening environment, before sharing them with the whole class. All along, during group work, the teacher uses expressions of ‘endearment’ that communicate love and encouragement, as illustrated by use of the phrase ‘my smallnyane ones’ that can be translated as ‘my tiny little ones.’ Mixing English and Sotho to create an expression that reaches deep into the ‘bowels’ of the students’ hearts allows students to imagine themselves as ‘legitimate participants’ in linguistic communities that transcend the boundaries of their classroom and speak to their personal and collective aspirations – as achievers – in the world at large.

Concluding Remarks

The examples used in this discussion come from classroom teachers who share not only similar professional realities (their schools are within walking distance) but also similar academic experiences as participants in the same teacher training program offered by the ISEA. All three of them are accomplished and well-respected teachers in their communities and yet there is a significant difference in the way that they ‘share’ talking time in class. An important difference between the teachers in the first two cases (Cases 1 and 2) and the teacher in Case 3 is the ability of the teacher in Case 3 to orchestrate learning events that maximize the value of every single resource available to her from the most tangible ones (e.g. books and visual aids) to the less tangible ones (e.g. strategic code-switching and expressions of endearment and rebuke in English and Sotho). Like a film director, she places the students at the front of the stage and exposes herself only as needed to redirect and reward students in their efforts to learn.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the teachers and learners who welcomed me into their classrooms, and my colleagues at the ISEA for extending their networking facilities to me.

[This paper was delivered at the Networking Conference hosted by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University, 9 – 11 April 2010.]

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 at ‘Networking’, an Eastern Cape conference for English teachers, in April this year. The need for this workshop came from teachers themselves after they were consulted about the topics they wished to see covered in the conference. Teachers indicated that they had difficulties in understanding and teaching cartoons as this was a new component of the English First Additional Language (FAL) curriculum which they had never tasted either as learners or teacher-trainees. They hoped the workshop would make a positive contribution to filling this gap, and my response was to offer a session entitled ‘”Listening” to visual images: appreciating cartoons.’

The 90-minute workshop was planned in stages that follow Gibbons’ curriculum cycle: building the field, modelling the text, joint construction and individual construction. In building the field, Newfield’s three key aspects of enjoying and understanding a cartoon (1995: 20) as shown in the table below were taught to 42 conference delegates:

Visual	1. Physical portrayal of characters: Facial expression and body language.  Who are the characters? 2. Clothing: What does this reveal about the characters’ status, position in society and role in current events? 3. Setting: This can indicate where the event is taking place, or it can convey a particular satirical point. 4. Genre: The political cartoon is a special genre or type of text.  It combines visual and verbal aspects.  It is recognised by its style of drawing (caricature) and its relevance to current events.
Verbal	5. Words: These are important in creating a specific meaning or conveying an interpretation or message.  The words are concise, witty/clever and thought-provoking.  We need to think about them.  We should consider: headings, captions, slogans, speech bubbles.
Context	6. Socio-political context: Even though the political cartoon provides many clues, it cannot be fully understood unless we know the real-life events on which the cartoon is based. 7. Media context: The publication in which the cartoon appears can give us a clue to the attitude or position of the cartoon, or the opinion conveyed in it.  We should ask ourselves, ‘Who is presenting the cartoon, and to whom?’

In modelling the text, these key aspects were identified and discussed in the cartoon below:

Even though the cartoon was designed and appeared a long time ago, it was ideal for the workshop partly because teachers could still remember the event, and its interpretation using Newfield’s aspects made for easier understanding; and partly because the distance in time dispelled any possibility of immediate political tensions surfacing in discussion. Cartoons that appeared in the newspapers immediately prior to the conference reflected strong political tensions in the country, something which might have distracted delegates from the focus of the workshop.

In tackling joint construction, delegates applied Newfield’s key aspects in relation to a second cartoon, and later they practised asking questions that could help learners to enjoy and understand that cartoon.

The last stage of individual construction was not done because of time. However, in the discussions that occurred in between the activities the following factors, which could constrain or enable appreciation and understanding of a cartoon, came out.

Familiarity of the visual context

There is often a tension between the visual context in which the cartoon is set and the real situation it represents. As an illustration, in the Bisho Massacre Cartoon, a tennis court scene represents the real shooting of protesters and the reactions of the two former presidents, FW De Klerk and Nelson Mandela. A constraint emerged when some delegates were not familiar with key concepts of a tennis game such as the layout of the tennis court, how participants are positioned, what rules, equipment and words are used. This unfamiliarity emerged because some delegates came from communities where tennis is not played. As a result, they had limited understanding and couldn’t appreciate this text. To overcome this difficulty, the role of the teacher was seen as crucial in building learners’ background knowledge about the topic by introducing the tennis court scene in a pre-interpretation activity that would later provide learners with a solid foundation to understand and appreciate the cartoon.

Familiarity with topical events

Some delegates were not familiar with topical affairs in South Africa and the world, so they struggled to identify the physical portrayal of characters. In the joint construction stage of the workshop where delegates applied Newfield’s key aspects in the second cartoon, which did not have explanatory notes, some referred to the man seating in the table as Nelson Mandela instead of Barack Obama. Those who identified the man as Nelson Mandela gave that answer because, either, they were confused by the Bisho Massacre Cartoon and thought that the second cartoon must also refer to mid-90s South Africa when Mandela was president; or because, on the other hand, they simply did not pick up the visual and verbal cues such as ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’, ’Health’, and ‘Care’, or associate these with the world economic crisis that affected many countries, including the USA, while Barack Obama was struggling to have his health care reforms accepted. All in all, delegates came to see that to interpret cartoons a person requires substantial background knowledge of the topic as well as an understanding of how cartoonists use graphic techniques such as, for example, using distortion for comic effect when they exaggerate a particular facial or body feature of the focal character (Adendorff, 1991).

In addition, many delegates did not appreciate this cartoon because they valued and relied on connotation more than denotation. When presented with the cartoon, the majority simply rushed to assign meaning without noticing or describing the visual elements and identifying verbal words as clues that provided factual evidence to support their claims. Connotation is a higher-order skill that relates to the deeper, hidden and figurative meaning of the cartoon, which cannot be easily achieved if the viewer does not know the socio-political or media context in which the cartoon is set, or fails to register the visual detail provided in the cartoon and its significance.

Beliefs about teaching and learning

In an intense discussion of the role of the teacher in presenting a cartoon, it came out that some delegates believed that the teacher was the only source of information in the classroom. The proponents of this idea viewed the teacher’s voice as dominant so that his/her understanding of the text was the best and must be the correct one. To me, as a workshop facilitator, that was like describing learners as ‘empty vessels’ that needed to be filled with information, and this attitude explained to some extent why such teachers encountered difficulties in teaching cartoons. Depending on the learners’ age and the extent of their exposure to cartoons, there is often a mismatch between the teacher and the learners who might well have more exposure than the teacher. In such situations, the teacher’s pouring of supposedly authoritative information into learners could be contrary to the envisaged new-curriculum learner who should be ‘imbued with the values and act in the interests of a society based on respect for democracy, equality, human dignity and social justice as promoted in the constitution’. This belief in the complete dominance of the teacher does not create a learning environment conducive to learners thinking critically and expressing themselves freely. Rather, it makes them passive recipients of information who can neither understand nor appreciate cartoons themselves.

Also, in teaching a cartoon the teacher typically assumes two roles, as a ‘mediator of learning’ and as the ‘consumer of the text’.  As a mediator of learning, his/her role is to help learners construct meaning on their own. As a text consumer, the teacher is just like learners who receive a text that has been constructed by a cartoonist who has woven his/her attitudes, values, beliefs and ideas into that text, and it is highly unlikely that, once they have interpreted its meaning, learners and teacher will automatically share the same viewpoint about a particular cartoon. This calls for a critical language awareness which ‘makes people aware of how language [and images] can be patronising, demeaning, disrespectful, offensive, exclusive or the opposite’ (square brackets mine) and if people choose to endorse the images presented, it helps them to do so ‘with open eyes, to recognise the compromise they are making, to identify their feelings about it, and to maintain an independent self-image’ (Ivanic, 1990: 129-131).  Teachers should, therefore, be critically aware of their own beliefs by being careful of their role as text consumer influencing their role as a mediator of learning.

Conclusion

We currently live in a world that is bombarded with visual images among which are cartoons, those humorous and satirical drawings encountered in many magazines, newspapers and on television. However, teachers need to make sure they view a lot of cartoons whilst they develop ways of helping learners appreciate them. Learners’ appreciation and understanding of cartoons usually develops slowly over a long time, especially for those learners who come from disadvantaged homes where reading and viewing materials are scarce. Those learners should be provided regularly with current and different newspapers. Cartoons form a genre that has its own language, and this language should be introduced and explored appropriately before interpretation is attempted. Lastly, some cartoons do not have one fixed meaning but rather a range of meanings, depending on the background knowledge one brings to bear on them. Different responses to one text should be expected. Cartoons are visual texts enjoyed by many learners and many more learners would enjoy them if teachers could learn how to present them well.

Acknowledgments The cartoon examples used above are sourced from Newfield (1995: 21) and http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/K/B/3/Economy-Stupid-Attic.jpg (accessed 24/04/10).

For further reading

Adendorff, R. (1991). Political cartoons: uncooperating forms of communication? In Prinsloo J and Criticos C (eds) Media matters in South Africa. Durban: Media Resource Centre, University of Natal. 206-213.

Gibbons, P (2002). Scaffolded language, scaffolded learning: teaching second language learners in mainstream classroom. Portsmouth NH: Heinamann.

Ivanic, K. (1990).  Language awareness in action. In R.Cartz (ed), Knowledge about language and curriculum. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Newfield, D. (1995). Words and pictures. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Morag Venter

Morag Venter taught high school English for 20 years and is a former head of English and senior marker for Senior Certificate. She is co-compiler of two current Grade 12 literature anthologies.

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.  Pages mysteriously came loose (the attached page having been used for Maths or History or a heart-rending love letter!), printed notes fluttered out whenever a page was turned  and, when exams arrived, all the pupil had to study from was a collection of dog-eared pages in no particular order.  Not a promising situation, especially as there is no textbook to refer to.

And yet these pupils were not trying to be difficult.  They generally participated in class, knew the bones of the plot and could offer some amazing insights at times.  I realised that many of them were just not academically disciplined or gifted enough to organise their books logically to ensure that they were user-friendly.  Many of the pupils simply started each entry on a new page – usually undated and without a heading!  If one asked them to add in information on a topic one had previously discussed, most of them fudged the issue and simply scribbled something somewhere on a blank centimetre of space – just to suggest that they were trying to be co-operative – but hadn’t a clue where the item should be placed.

What to do?  There simply wasn’t time to check the books often enough – and to follow up meaningfully was becoming a nightmare!  And all that checking and nagging meant that periods often became battlegrounds instead of opportunities to discuss and experience new ideas.

After much reading and thinking I decided that I had to spend more time with the pupils formatting these books.  To do so, I had to make sure that I knew the play or novel thoroughly before starting to teach it.  More than ever, I needed to plan the questions I wanted to set on each act/chapter as well as the issues I wanted to highlight in advance so that my strategy was clear.  (Really what I was doing was drafting the Lesson Plans and Assessment Standards although nobody used those terms in those days!)

Our first lesson was an extremely practical one.  At that stage everyone still had a pen, a ruler, a pencil and even had a notebook!  So we could work together.

I insisted on a separate book for each setwork.  No-one was allowed to do a novel from one end and poetry from the other!

Then we proceeded to allocate pages. All they had to do was to pencil in the appropriate heading at the appropriate place.  I didn’t have time to wait for those who enjoy decorating each page with coloured kokis!  That could be done at home, if they wished to do so. Although I issued a written explanation of what we were going to do, I found it useful to walk them through the procedure.  The time spent was recouped later as we did not have to wait while the pupils paged endlessly through to find the right page – everyone knew exactly where their neighbour’s page would be!

For the novel or a play, I allocated the first page(s) to Background.  This was where we would collect comments on historical details/ setting/purpose (e.g. What Golding aimed to discuss in Lord of the Flies.  What is a fable?, etc). Most of this was information I would provide.

Thereafter, we allocated a double page to each Main Character and a single page to supporting characters.  The page(s) was divided into columns: Physical description, Background details, Character – and a separate column where we would accumulate evidence of where these character traits became apparent. At this stage the names are meaningless to the class but already they are interacting with the characters and learning to spell the names correctly.  The lesson is therefore not merely administrative. I also squeezed in a half-column on the role or significance of this character to the development of the plot or theme (eg foil, representing the educated, thoughtful type of person, etc) although this would be completed only after we had read and discussed the whole book.

More double pages were allocated to key themes and images – it is up to you whether you label these initially or simply leave the pages blank to be used when the themes emerge. And the rest of the workbook could be used for short questions and essays.  Only the back two pages were reserved.  These we used for important vocabulary items – words which were essential to their understanding of the text.

As we began to study the book, we spent time transferring information to the appropriate pages and columns.  Pupils needed only to write down the relevant word or phrase in the column, although we generally included a page reference under Character so we could justify our choice of adjective. This activity might be during class – when one needed a change of pace or activity – or at home where this action might serve to indicate that they had read the required pages or listened in class.  Sometimes this was done individually, sometimes as a group.  One could vary this considerably using timed sessions or getting different groups to do different research for the class.  The rigid structure of the notebook does not necessitate a rigid lesson structure.  It merely helps the pupils to be organised.

I found this made my life much easier.  I could check the books more speedily, picking up at a glance who had included too little information and whose work was too sloppy to be acceptable. Group discussions became more meaningful as the individuals had something concrete to contribute.  Pupils could also assess each others’ work more easily.  A pupil who was absent could catch up something of what they had missed. The pupils learnt to distinguish between character and appearance, something weaker pupils struggle to do.  And when we begin to write setwork essays, the necessary information was readily available so I could focus attention on the skills of writing.  Because each pupil had written down their own descriptors and highlighted the proofs they felt most valuable, these essays were still very individualistic – and there was no danger of producing ‘model answers’ which the pupils simply learn off by heart.  Moreover, because filling in the columns had required active involvement with the text, the pupils had developed some insight which enabled them to write about the text more confidently.

Eventually, I used this method for my top class as well.  I found that they appreciated being able to focus on the argument and the insight, rather than on the organisation of their notes.  There is no foolproof method, but this strategy vastly improved the quality of the notebooks.  I knew that almost everything the pupils needed to use for studying was in a ‘findable place’. And more importantly, although their style and their argument might be somewhat inadequate, at least they could show the examiner that they knew what was going on.

Perhaps you too will find it useful.

Morag Venter

Retired English teacher and former Head of English

Sometimes teaching Shakespeare is just hard work.  Often we spend so much time explaining the vocabulary that we don’t seem to get beyond the words to the play.

Help is at hand!

The Cambridge School Shakespeare series is a most valuable resource.  Although these books would probably cost too much to provide for all your learners, you as the teacher should make every effort to get them.  I bought the latest one I needed second-hand from Amazon.com for 5 cents and it has been worth every cent of the postage.

Although the text is not pruned or simplified, the activities provided for enrichment and discussion are just at the right level for teenagers.  These books are packed with splendid suggestions, incorporating all kinds of skills from writing headlines, to interviewing for positions (eg Chief of Police for Verona!), to casting staff members (oops!) or film stars the pupils think would best convey the role.  There are suggestions for letters and replies to agony aunts, for debates, for television interviews – the list goes on and on.  The suggestions are so practical and yet such fun that they will involve all the pupils in the analysis of the play.

The general handbook for teachers, Teaching Shakespeare, is most stimulating and contains a 73-page chapter on ‘Active methods’.  And the individual editions on the different plays are more specific but equally exciting.  All of them are printed in a most user-friendly format – easy to use in the classroom. Series editor, Rex Gibson, and his team have done an excellent job.

Do yourself a favour and get yourself a copy as soon as possible.

Teaching Shakespeare by Rex Gibson, Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 0 521 57788 8

Or Romeo and Juliet ISBN: 0 521 63497 0

Haripersad Sewlall

Former Assistant Superintendent of Education (Academic), House of Delegates (TVL)

1.  Introduction

How may the study of Shakespearean play be undertaken in the time available in a First-Language classroom?  The teacher is expected to spend no more than a term (approximately 16-18 periods) on the study of any one set work, even a Shakespearean play.  Most teachers, understandably, extend this period by resorting to ‘flexi-time’ – which in reality means poaching time from other aspects of English!

A brief, theoretical background to the history of Shakespearean criticism can be helpful, Derek Traversi reasserted in 1968 a view he had advocated in the early part of this century:

To proceed from the word to the image in its verse setting, and thence to trace the way in which a pattern of interdependent themes is gradually woven in to the dramatic action, unifying and illuminating it, is the most fruitful approach – the most accurate and, if properly handled, the least subject to prejudice – to Shakespeare’s art. (Traversi, p 17)

In brief, Traversi underscores the shift from a psychological study of character, evident in Bradley and his adherents, to a study of diction, character, action, theme and motivation.  The danger of subjectivity will be apparent to anyone who has read some of the criticism of even an astute critic such as Coleridge who would condemn a play because he disapproved of the actor!  Teachers and students therefore need to be circumspect when using criticism from the Romantic and Victorian periods, often included in some editions used at schools.  Illustrations, maps, time charts, etc are invaluable for consolidation.  Even memorable lines can be displayed on charts to encourage (not compel) students to learn by heart.

2.  An outline of the plot

It would be ideal if all students had read the text before coming to the classroom.  Alas, this is not going to be the case, as many a teacher perennially laments.  It becomes incumbent on the teacher therefore to present the plot in an interesting manner.  No opportunity must be passed by to draw parallels with contemporary society as this gives the play relevance and significance for the student.  The playing of a recording or a video from beginning to end serves little purpose, unless punctuated occasionally by a commentary from the teacher.  An overview can be presented in the form of a brief story-cum-dramatization in order to plunge the student in to the sound and feel of the text as soon as possible.  Graphics, sketches and simple tasks on worksheets to consolidate the plot have been used to advantage by many a teacher.  A knowledge of the plot has to be established before a thematic study can be undertaken.

1. 3. The opening scene/s

In a thematic approach to Shakespeare, the importance of the opening scene/s of the first act cannot be over-emphasized.  The ability to assess the thematic significance of the opening scenes of a well-constructed play is a skill that has to be developed in students.  In As you like it, for example, Orlando’s complaints addressed to Adam introduce us to the themes of conflict and disorder in normal human relationships.  The next extract the teacher could focus on is the reply Charles makes to Oliver’s query about the latest news.  These lines reinforce the theme of domestic discord and carry it further.  Here, students have the opportunity of exploring human motives and establishing contrasts in character.  A study of plot, character, theme, conflict and human motive, is the crux of any Shakespearean play.

Another skill that can be imparted at this stage is how to assess character:  by what a person says; what he/she does (action); and what others say about that person.  In Macbeth the function of the soliloquy and the aside as modes of characterization will be highlighted.  In As you like it, the lesson could be rounded off on an interesting counterpoint:  namely, the hostility of two brothers in vivid contrast to the loyalty and friendship of Adam (to be reinforced later by the relationship between Rosalind and Celia).  Once the theme of domestic conflict has been consolidated, the class is ready to embark on a study of disharmony in a country – a Duke banished by an unscrupulous brother – and its consequences.  Life-skills and parallels with contemporary life should go hand-in-hand with every literature lesson.  All this will not be achieved in one period.  Coming to grips with a Shakespearean play, especially at Std 8 level, will require patience and effort.

What has been said about the opening scenes of As you like it is also pertinent to other plays by Shakespeare:  they generally announce themes and conflicts that resonate as the plays progress.  The teacher and students could then launch into an exploration of the themes, focusing on the thematic imagery and metaphor that are woven into the fabric of the play. To achieve this with economy, it is not possible to explicate every line in class.  Only a selected number of extracts can be examined.  Along this journey several aspects will have to be touched on incidentally and reinforced periodically.  Students’ attention will have to be drawn to Shakespeare’s use of prose and verse and their respective functions.

4.  Reading the text

Recordings by well-known stage actors may be used in class, but roles may also be assigned to pupils prior to the day of the lesson so that they may be able to ‘act’ their parts with confidence.

5.  Worksheets, tests and assignments

Worksheets should test pupils’ knowledge of context, theme, content, imagery and diction.  Teachers need to be wary of study guides which contain a battery of questions.  They need to be highly selective.  Nothing could be more counter-productive and soul-destroying in literature study than working through a plethora of questions during a weekend or vacation.  Contextual questions should relate to the gestalt of the play:  its meaning.  Therefore the extract chosen must have relevance so that the questions which are extrapolated from it may encompass the main themes of the play.  When setting essay-type questions for assignments, once again the main themes should be borne in mind.  Essay-writing skill must be revised and implemented.  The matric examiners’ comments over the years on this type of question should be heeded.

6.  Conclusion

To complete a Shakespearean play in the time allotted, the teacher requires the skills of a good story-teller so that even when chunks of the text are skimmed over, the integrity of the plot and theme is not sacrificed.  Admittedly, the endeavour will not be without its frustrations sometimes.  The creative teacher adapts, adjusts and expunges, but must avoid creating the impression that literature teaching should be teacher-dominated.  Further, the ongoing debate about the worth, or otherwise, of teaching Shakespeare to secondary-school pupils has been side-stepped, in much the same way as the issue of whether Shakespeare should be studied as literature or enjoyed as drama.  The hints offered here could also be pertinent to the study of any other genre of literature in an English (First Language) classroom.  The teacher is always in a time-bind, therefore it is impossible for him/her to read every page and chapter in the classroom.

Finally, a word on Shakespearean plays for junior classes.  The head of a department needs to exercise judicious choice in the selection of the student’s first Shakespearean play for study.  Besides taking into account what would interest most students at this age, the teacher should consider other factors that may influence the students’ attitude.  It must be noted that Shakespeare’s work ranges widely in dramatic complexity, style, diction and even length.  Any teacher who has taught King Lear in one year and Julius Caesar in another, will know the difference in length between these two play, not to mention the differences in dramatic structure and diction.

Reference

Traversi, D.  An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol 1/11, Hollis and Carter, London. 1968.

[This article was originally published in CRUX: 27:3, August 1993, published by the Foundation for Education, Science and Technology – but it is still of value to the current English teacher.]

Peter Titlestad

Retired Professor of English, University of Pretoria

‘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.

‘Motivate your answer’ is becoming a stock phrase in examination papers, at the cost of other, excellent, English phrases. Would not ‘give reasons for your opinion’ be pleasanter, more direct, more comprehensible? This, and other possibilities, are in danger of being lost to English in South Africa. Should our ‘learners’ grow up not knowing ‘put the case for, ‘argue your case’,  ‘give a reasoned argument’,  ‘state your reasons’, ‘make a well-reasoned case for’, ‘back up your opinions’, ‘justify, ‘explain’?  Instead of ‘a good motivation’ one can ‘make a strong case for’; rather than a ‘weak motivation’ one could say ‘a weak case for’; or ‘weak reasoning’ or an ‘unconvincing explanation’. The specialized phrase ‘put the case’, to express a hypothetical situation, can sometimes be essential.

Jean Aitcheson, in Language Decay, puts the case that change does not mean language decay. This is a stock-in-trade argument against the wish to preserve, conventionally objurgated as ‘purism’. However, would it not be a pity if South Africa lost the eloquent alternatives to ‘motivate’ and ‘motivation’? ‘Motivate’ is sterile and abstract; the other terms are flexible, vigorous, idiomatic English, and the expressions learners are likely to come across in all sorts of documents and situations wherever English is used. They are important items of vocabulary, basic to any debate or argument. Not to have access to this area of vocabulary is a severe handicap. They are essential items of communication. If one wants to teach ‘communicative English,’ this is the kind of thing that should be taught.

Andrew Foley

Andrew Foley is Professor and Head of the Department of English, and Director of the Division of Languages, in the Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The question of mother-tongue education in South Africa remains a vexed one. On the one hand, it seems reasonable and desirable that learners should be able to receive education in their mother tongue, if they so wish. On the other hand, there are some very real difficulties involved in the implementation of this ideal. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what these difficulties are, and then to suggest what needs to be done to overcome them. The intention is neither to argue for or against the notion of mother-tongue education in the South African context, nor to consider whether its implementation is practically possible, but simply to spell out what courses of action need to be undertaken if the idea is to be seriously pursued.

Background

The South African Constitution guarantees learners the right to receive education in the language of their choice[1]. Most current research suggests that learners entering school are able to learn best through their mother tongue, and that a second language (such as English) is more easily acquired if the learner already has a firm grasp of his/her home language. Furthermore, the poor throughput rates in South African schools at the moment, where barely a quarter of African language learners who enter the schooling system are likely to reach Matric[2], seems to indicate that the current practice of using English as the initial language of learning and teaching is at least one contributing factor to this problem.

For some years now, educationists have proposed that African language learners should be taught in their mother tongue for at least the first three years of school before switching over to English. More recently, the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, speaking at a Language Policy conference at the end of 2006, intimated that this initial period of mother-tongue instruction would be extended to six years, that is, both the Foundation Phase (Grades 1 to 3) and the Intermediate Phase (Grades 4 to 6). [This has been confirmed by her successor – Ed.]

If this proposal is to be taken seriously, there are a number of questions which need to be clarified and considered. The rest of this paper will be devoted to this task. These questions may be divided into four main headings, although, as will become evident, there is much overlap between them: language development, curriculum development, teacher education and school implementation.

Language Development

The nine official African languages are certainly able to function as media of communication at such levels as interpersonal conversation, narrative and cultural practice. As they currently exist, however, the standard written forms of the languages have not yet been developed to the point where they are able to carry academic discourse effectively and therefore function as full-fledged languages of learning and teaching, even at the Foundation Phase. For the most part, they are based on particular rural dialects in conservative contexts, having been standardised in the nineteenth century by missionaries for such specific purposes as proselytisation, and later by the apartheid era Language Boards at least partly as a mechanism of social control. As such, these standard written forms remain in many ways archaic, limited and context-bound, and out of touch with the modern scientific world.[3] In addition, these standard forms are often quite different from the various dialects spoken by the actual language communities, even to the point in some cases of mutual incomprehensibility (see Schuring 1993; Herbert and Bailey 2002:59f). Nevertheless, it is axiomatic, as the Canadian linguist, William F. Mackey (1992:52), has pointed out, that ‘the lack of standardisation jeopardises the potential status of a language’ and that a language which lacks a well-established written form cannot become empowered.

If they are to be implemented as academic languages of learning and teaching, therefore, the standard written forms need to be modernised, regularised, codified and elaborated. This entails a number of large-scale projects: the revision of the spelling and orthography rules of the languages; the elimination of dialectal variation in the writing of the languages; the enlargement of their vocabulary, especially though not only in the fields of science and technology, together with the creation of modern dictionaries; and the codification of their grammars, based on the actual current practices of their speech communities, rather than on otiose cultural norms.

It is clear that this is a very large undertaking, which will require the provision of very large resources, both material and human. Of course, in theory it can be done, and the example of Afrikaans in this country is often cited as evidence for this. It must be remembered, however, that the development of Afrikaans was made relatively easy by the fact that it emerged out of Dutch, an already fully functional scientific language; that enormous resources were made available through the National Party government; that it was fuelled by an intensely nationalistic political will; and that it was whole-heartedly supported by a community seeking exclusivity and autonomy from English. None of these conditions obtains in the case of the African languages in the present context, which makes the possibility of their development into academic languages far less certain. And it must be realised that all the investment put into the elaboration of Afrikaans would have to be increased at least ninefold if all of the official African languages are to be developed to the same degree.

It must be noted, furthermore, that the development of the indigenous languages into academic media of communication cannot be achieved merely through the endeavours of a few scholars working in isolation, however industrious and well-intentioned they may be. This technicist and artificial view of language development is plainly insufficient. Instead, what needs to occur is that the entire intellectual speech community of each language becomes actively involved in the development of the language as academic discourse by strenuously attempting to use the language to write scholarly articles, give formal lectures, present conference papers, produce textbooks and scientific manuals, and the numerous other activities which require a rigorous academic register. It is only when co-ordinated and systematic linguistic research is able to draw on, and feed back into, an actual, developing discourse of practice in a mutually enhancing relationship, that a language can begin to evolve into a functioning mode of academic and scientific expression.

After a period of some inertia, a number of projects have recently been undertaken to develop the African languages by both the university sector and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). These include the establishment of research centres at some universities, as well as the creation of new courses in translation and terminography. The nine African National Language Bodies (under the aegis of PanSALB) have initiated projects aimed at orthographic standardisation; lexicography and terminology development; and the promotion of literature in the indigenous languages (see, for example, Webb, Deumert and Lepota, 2005). It remains true, however, that progress has not been rapid and that a very great deal more needs to be done if the ideal of the African languages functioning fully as academic and scientific media of instruction in South Africa is to be actualised.

Curriculum Development

If the African languages are to be used as languages of learning and teaching in the classroom, the first and most obvious step that must be taken is to translate the Revised National Curriculum Statement (the RNCS) into these languages. At the moment, the only subject curricula which appear in the indigenous languages are the African languages as subjects themselves. The rest are available in English and Afrikaans only. It is plainly unjustifiable to propose that subjects be taught in the African languages when the RNCS – the very basis of all subject content and methodology – is not available to teachers in the putative languages of learning and teaching.

In the Outcomes Based Education system which South Africa has adopted, there are three Learning Areas in the Foundation Phase: Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills. The subjects making up the Literacy Learning Area – the eleven official languages as subjects – are obviously written in the particular languages themselves. But the Numeracy and Life Skills Learning Areas have not yet been written in the nine African languages. Now, for this translation to be conducted successfully, it is imperative to amplify and clarify the subject-specific terminology in the African languages, as well as to develop their capacity for generic academic discourse. Thus, it is necessary to develop the African languages as academic and scientific languages, at least to a certain level, before the Foundation Phase curriculum can be translated, and, consequently, before one can expect teachers to begin teaching the curriculum in the learners’ mother tongues with any degree of consistency and precision.

In the Intermediate Phase, matters are rather more complex. Here, there are eight Learning Areas: Languages, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Culture, Economic and Management Sciences, Life Orientation, and Technology. Moreover, within these Learning areas there may be one or more distinct subjects: for example, Natural Sciences comprises both Physical Science and Biology; Social Sciences includes both History and Geography. As is to be expected, the curriculum for these Learning Areas becomes increasingly detailed and specialised as the learner progresses through the various Grades. In consequence, the translation of the RNCS in this Phase can only proceed successfully if the African languages have been developed to a significantly higher degree as academic languages. And, at the risk of repetition, it is only once the RNCS has been translated that teachers will be able to begin teaching the various Learning Areas effectively in the African languages.

Naturally, it is not only the RNCS which must be available in the indigenous languages. All textbooks, readers, support material, teaching aids, guides and literature must be made readily accessible in these languages and kept continuously up to date. This is particularly important in the fields of mathematics, science and technology where an extensive range of new terms and phrases will have to be developed, learnt by the teachers and then communicated to the learners.

Apart from the translation of the RNCS and related learning and teaching materials, it is also essential that the curricula for the African languages themselves be revisited and revised. The content structure and methodology for the teaching of the languages remains, like the languages themselves in many ways, rooted in an outmoded and ineffective pedagogic model which hampers learning and diminishes interest. As a result, many learners emerge from the schooling system unable to write their own mother tongue with any acceptable level of competence. Moreover, since they have often not been taught English (or Afrikaans) successfully, they find themselves unable to communicate effectively in their second language, in either oral or written mode. While they may have attained a certain level of basic interpersonal communicative competence, they lack what Jim Cummins (2000, for example) termed cognitive academic language proficiency, and thus they are unprepared for higher education or for training in a sophisticated work environment.

At this point, it is necessary to make a distinction between employing the African languages as authentic media of instruction throughout the curriculum and using the languages in the classroom in an informal, ad hoc manner in some or other form of code-switching. Given the diverse linguistic profiles of many South African classrooms, together with learners’ limited grasp of English, it is inevitable that teachers will resort to a mixture of languages for purposes of clarification and explication. In such contexts, code-switching is frequently a vital and indispensable pedagogical tool. Nevertheless, if the goal is to develop the African languages into genuine academic languages, and have teachers use them as such, then code-switching cannot be viewed as anything more than a partial and transitional support mechanism. This becomes ever more apparent as learners move into the Intermediate Phase and beyond, where increasing emphasis is placed on independent reading and writing skills. Learners who remain reliant on mixed-language modes of communication will find it extremely difficult to read texts written in the standard form of a particular language, as well as to write essays and assignments and to answer tests and examinations. Furthermore, given the highly context-specific, personal and arbitrary nature of code-switching, it is impossible to construct generally comprehensible and enduring academic texts in a mixed-language format. Thus, while code-switching practices currently play an important role in many South African classroom environments, they can never be construed as constituting a target language of acquisition, or as representing a viable alternative to the development of formal academic proficiency in the standard form of a language.

It ought to be clear from the foregoing discussion just how much work needs to be done in order for teachers even to begin teaching the first six Grades of school in the indigenous languages. To suggest that such teaching could begin imminently, and to propose rapid policy changes to this effect, is both disingenuous and irresponsible.

Teacher Education

In addition to language and curriculum development, a crucial aspect of providing mother tongue education in South Africa lies in the field of teacher education (or teacher training as it used rather inelegantly to be termed). In the early years of this decade the responsibility for teacher education was transferred from the former colleges of education to the universities. During the same period, the numbers of students enrolling for African language courses at universities dwindled, for various reasons, to almost nothing. Even in Teacher Education programmes where an African language is a compulsory credit, the number of students who proceed with the study of an African language beyond the obligatory first level course is negligible. There is, as a result, a real crisis in African language teacher supply.

As a first step in addressing this crisis, it is essential that the government offer service contract bursaries for student teachers specialising in African languages. In this scheme, students receive a full bursary (covering tuition, board and living expenses), but then have to pay the bursary back through a year of service for every year of study in which they received the bursary. Over the past few years, such bursaries have been offered for Maths and Science students only. In 2006, however, the Minister of Education announced that such bursaries would be extended to students specialising in Technology and Languages (both African languages and English). It is gratifying to note that this service-linked bursary scheme, which teacher education institutions have been demanding for some time, has begun to be implemented in 2007, through the Fundza Lushaka project (see Metcalfe 2007). It remains to be seen, however, whether sufficient numbers of student teachers will enrol for and graduate in African language courses, and then whether the Department of Education has the capacity to ensure that they do actually take up African language teaching posts in the schools.

Even this is not enough, however. Incentives must be provided for graduating teachers to accept employment in the rural areas and township schools where the need for teachers qualified to teach in the African students’ mother tongues is most needed. Such incentives could take the form of higher salary packages, performance bonuses and better promotional opportunities. If this does not happen, the current trend of successful black education graduates taking posts in private schools or government schools in the affluent suburban areas will continue.

Here it is necessary to remember that the issue is not merely that of teaching the African languages as subjects, but rather the ability to use the African languages as the media of instruction for the entire curriculum. For student teachers to be empowered to achieve this goal, a number of further steps need to be taken. Firstly, as with the African language school curriculum, the African language curriculum at tertiary level needs to be drastically revised and modernised, so that students are enabled to study and learn these languages as effective carriers of academic discourse. Secondly, the entire Teacher Education curriculum (or at the very least the undergraduate Bachelor of Education programme) needs to be translated into each of the African languages. This would include all the official school subjects, but most especially Mathematics and the Sciences. As was noted in the first section of this paper, however, for this to be made possible the languages themselves need to be significantly developed. Thirdly, it will be necessary to provide a very large number of new Teacher Education lecturers who are able to teach the newly translated curriculum in the medium of the African languages. At the moment, a very small percentage of university teacher educators are able to provide quality tertiary tuition through the African students’ mother tongues, and even fewer in the scientific subjects. Finally, for the requisite development and continuous upgrading of mother-tongue tuition at tertiary level to be possible, it is necessary for high-level research to be conducted. Thus, optimally, each university’s Faculty or School of Education would need to attract and support top quality education researchers working specifically in the field of African languages in education, whether through research units, centres of excellence or individual fellowships, grants or professorial chairs.

In addition to the training of pre-service student teachers, it will also be necessary to upgrade the competence levels of teachers already in the system. Universities will have to provide a range of additional courses for in-service teachers so that they are able to acquire academic proficiency in the newly-developed African languages as well as enhanced methodological skills in utilising the languages as media of instruction in all the various Learning Areas. Such courses would, of necessity, need to be taught part-time (after hours, during the vacations, or as block-release programmes) which would place an enormous burden on both the schools and the universities, and would again require a heavy investment on the part of the State in terms of additional lecturing staff, tuition and transportation costs, and perhaps even temporary teacher-replacements. Such courses would also by their very nature have to be completed over an extended period of time and would thus require a strong commitment on the part of both lecturers and teachers over and above the normal duties which they have to perform in an already highly pressurised work environment.

As was the case with language and curriculum development, it is evident that for all of this to become possible, the State will have to make extremely heavy investments in human and material resources far beyond the provision of the limited number of student bursaries it currently offers. Whether the State budget for education can or will ever be enlarged to meet all of these multiple costs remains unclear.

Implementation in the School

The fourth aspect of mother tongue education involves its actual implementation in the schools. Even assuming that at some point in the future the African languages have been effectively developed, that the curriculum has been efficiently translated, and that a full quota of properly trained teachers is available, there is still the question of whether schools will adopt the policy and implement it thoroughly. For this to take place, a number of stakeholders will have to be convinced of the broad benefits of mother-tongue education, not merely in a cognitive sense, but in a much larger socio-economic context. Such stakeholders include government education officials, school governing bodies, principals, teachers, and, most importantly, parents and learners. If learners and their parents do not actively desire mother-tongue instruction, then all the effort in the world will not make the policy viable. And for this desire to be inculcated, parents and their children will have to see that mother-tongue education leads to palpable benefits in such spheres as economic empowerment, social mobility and influence, and pathways to further academic opportunities. All of this raises questions of the instrumental value of the African languages in South African society more generally which, though of interest and importance, lies beyond the scope of the present paper.

A more specific question related to mother-tongue education in schools concerns the role of English. No matter how rapidly or to what degree the African languages are developed, it is safe to assume that English will continue to occupy a role of crucial importance in South Africa for the foreseeable future. Even if the African languages are utilised as languages of learning and teaching in the first years of school, at some point there will have to be a switch to English as the medium of instruction, whether this takes place after three years, or, as is now proposed, after six years. Thus, English will have to receive systematic and sustained attention, and will have to be taught extremely effectively as a subject during the initial years of schooling so that when the transition does take place (be it gradually or immediately) learners will be sufficiently competent in the language to be able to cope with learning through it. Indeed, even if mother tongue education were one day to be employed right through to Matric level, learners would still need to be proficient in English for the purposes of higher education where, in a globalised academic environment, English is indispensable. At the moment, however, English is, in many cases, badly taught in South African schools. Just as important as the production of large numbers of competent mother-tongue teachers, therefore, is the development of high-quality teachers of English who can be deployed in the rural and township schools. Again, a system of service-linked contract bursaries and incentives to work in areas of greatest need must be implemented immediately for student teachers specialising in the teaching of English. The Minister of Education, as mentioned previously, has included English in the list of priority subjects for student teachers, and this is to be welcomed as a long overdue practical measure. But, as in the case of African language teaching, steps must be taken, over and above this, to ensure the upgrading of in-service teachers in terms of academic proficiency in the language, content knowledge and improved methodological practice. It is a simple truism that any educational system which prioritises the African languages at the expense of English is destined to fail at the levels both of practical reality and educational theory. As even so avid a proponent of heritage languages as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas has observed, in multilingual societies it is essential that all learners are enabled to ‘learn enough of the power language to be able to influence the society or, especially, to acquire a common language with other subordinated groups, a shared medium of communication and analysis’ (1981:128).

In the best of all possible worlds, learners, especially in areas where English is rarely used, would begin their schooling in their mother tongue and then at some point switch over to English as the medium of instruction, having acquired enough English through subject study to be able to cope with it. At the same time, they would continue to study their home languages as subjects in a model of additive bilingualism. Conversely, in areas where English is able to be used as the language of learning and teaching from the outset, it is just as important that learners acquire proficiency in at least one official African language. In schools where Afrikaans is the medium of instruction, it is not unreasonable to require that in addition to their mother tongue, Afrikaans-speaking learners acquire both English (as they invariably wish to do anyway) and an African language.

From this it ought to be apparent that there can be no single language policy which would suit every school context in South Africa. The society simply remains too disparate and differentiated for any ‘one size fits all’ system to be practicable or even desirable.[4] What is not unfair to expect, however, is that by the time learners leave school they will all have full academic proficiency in at least one language (for the moment this would continue to be English or Afrikaans) as well as some degree of academic proficiency in one and perhaps two other official South African languages.

However, even within this ideal linguistic scenario, there are some possibly unexpected and certainly ironic implications. For schools seriously to implement initial mother-tongue instruction (followed later by English) means that schools would have to be divided into particular language groupings, and learners would have to attend a school offering their particular language. While this does happen informally to a certain degree, a formalised policy would in effect return South Africa (at least in the primary schools) to a kind of linguistic apartheid reminiscent of a former era. Even in the unlikely event of township schools being able to offer parallel-medium education in two or more African languages, there would still effectively exist a language apartheid between the various classes within the school. It is not clear whether the current proponents of mother-tongue education in this country have thought through these matters with sufficient care.

Finally, there remains the question of individual choice, and this brings the present discussion full circle. In any democracy parental (and learner) choice is paramount, especially when it comes to such issues as the language in which a child is to receive his or her education. It is no small matter that this right is enshrined in the Constitution. If, after all is said and done, parents continue to insist, as the majority currently does,[5] that their children be educated in English rather than their mother tongue, then the onus rests on the State to ensure that this is provided as effectively as possible for everyone who wants it. And if this does indeed continue to be the will of the majority, then the State must take far more active and extensive steps to improve the teaching and learning of English in South African schools than has hitherto been the case. No language in education policy which is forced on the majority against its will can ever succeed, and will serve only to perpetuate the unequal and inefficient conditions which currently exist in South African education.

References

Baker, Colin. 2006. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (4th edition). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996.

Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual matters.

Department of Education. 1997. Norms and Standards Regarding Language Policy; Language in Education Policy. Government Gazette No.685, 9 May.

FutureFact 2006 Survey. Languages.

Available at http://www.futurefact.co.za/2006survey.html.

Herbert, R. K. and Bailey, R. 2002. The Bantu Languages: Sociohistorical perspectives. In Rajend Mesthrie (ed.) Language in South Africa. Cambridge: University Press:449-475.

Mackey, William F. 1992. Mother Tongues, Other Tongues and Vehicular Languages. Perspectives 81 22(1):45-57 (my translation from the French).

Metcalfe, Mary. 2007. In Search of Quality Schooling for All. Mail&Guardian (Getting Ahead) January 26 to February 1:4-5.

Pandor, Naledi. 2006. Language Issues and Challenges (opening address at the Language Policy Implementation in HEIs Conference, Pretoria, 5 October. Available at http://www.education.gov.za/dynamic/dynamic.aspx?pageid=306&id=2290.

Schuring, G. K. 1993. Language and Education in South Africa: A policy study. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 1981. Bilingualism or Not: The education of minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual matters.

Webb, Vic, Deumert, Ana and Lepota, Biki (eds). 2005. The Standardisation of African Languages in South Africa. Pretoria: PanSALB and the University of Pretoria.

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[1] This right is, however, qualified by the consideration of reasonable practicability, which is defined in the Language in Education Policy of 1997 as occurring when 40 learners in a particular grade in a primary school, or 35 learners in a particular grade in a secondary school, demand to be taught in their mother tongue.

[2] As a number of newspapers reported, of the number of learners who entered Grade 1 in 1994 only 21.9% wrote the 2005 Matric examination. Even taking into account such factors as the repetition of grades or learners leaving to study at FET Colleges, the percentage cannot be much higher than 25%.

[3] To give but two lexical examples, there is no agreed equivalent in isiZulu for the word “hypothesis”, while in Sesotho one term is used for the quite distinct scientific notions of “force”, “power” and “energy”.

[4] Colin Baker (2006:215f) provides a typology of bilingual education in which ten main models, each with multitudinous sub-varieties, are discussed. Which of these models would be best for any particular South African school is a complex matter, and is clearly best left to each specific School Governing Body to decide.

[5] This is borne out by the FutureFact 2006 survey, which reveals that, “apart from the Afrikaans community, between 60%-67% of all other language groups feel that English is the preferred language for education”. Indeed, of the remaining 33%-40% of the sample, less than 20% preferred mother tongue education (at whatever level); the remainder stating no preference. In addition to this, 82% of the sample claimed to be able to read and understand English, and, again apart from the Afrikaans community, between 72%-77% of all other language groups believe that English should be the main official language of South Africa.

Education in English: an easy solution or the root of the problem in South Africa?

Dr Malcolm Venter, PhD English Linguistics

This year I have had the pleasure, as a retired English teacher and high school principal, of lecturing to the PGCE students at Stellenbosch University who are training to become English teachers. I set them an assignment entitled, ‘English in South Africa – a double-edged sword’. I was impressed by many of the assignments – at the insight and the passion and concern they showed at the plight of the thousands of learners who have to conduct their studies through a language which is not their Home Language. Considering that many of the students are Afrikaans-speaking whites, it is encouraging to know that our young people have a broader vision of education in this country than just their own back yards.

I have edited the assignments to a certain degree – clear errors have been removed; but I have tried to leave the flavour of young people, some of them not English-speaking.

Because the assignment was based on class discussions and mostly common sources, there are obvious similarities between the different assignments; but there are sufficient differences to warrant publishing five essays.

Alida Barnard

PGCE student, Stellenbosch University(2010)

According to the 2001 Census (Statistics South Africa, 2001:5), English is the home language of only 8,2% of South Africans. In a diverse country with 11 official languages, English acts as an important lingua franca in commerce both within the country as well as in international contacts. It follows that a solid knowledge of English opens definite social and economic doors for South African learners. Having one’s education in English will definitely give a learner ample time to become fluent in English. But is it really to the child’s advantage in the longer term? Does a fluency in English measure up to scientifically proven better cognitive development through home-language education?

For many people in South Africa, English has become the language that is used for the public impersonal domain, which can be seen as both a ‘concrete setting’ and ‘the general activity conventionally associated with the setting’ (Jeffery and Meshtrie, 2010:4). In this case, English is the language of economic activities, parliament, tertiary education, science and technology (The English Academy, 2009:1); it has become the language of status and economic power. Teaching English to African-language speakers, who form the biggest percentage of the lowest economic class, would thus be an important tool for economic growth.

Parent’s wishes

It is not surprising that many parents want to give their children a better chance by throwing them in at the deep end and wanting them to learn English in such a drastic way in school by having their whole education through English, especially if the child is not in an environment laden with English stimuli. This has been one of the main arguments against home-language education in South Africa. According to Heugh (2000:20) there is, however, ‘no scientific evidence to support the myth that the majority of parents want straight for only English’ education. On the contrary, as early as 1993 studies showed that only 22% of African parents wanted their children to receive their education through English (Heugh, 2000:16). A more recent study done by the Pan South African Language Bureau (PANSALB) in 2000 shows that only 7,6% of parents thought ‘it is more important that learners learn in English than in other languages’.

One of the first things that had to change after 1994 was the education policy. Equal education needed to be given to all in the new democratic country. Following the negative connotations of mother-tongue education in Bantu Education, the enormous costs and time needed to translate the syllabuses and develop the African languages to academic standards and lastly, the pressure to change the education system as soon as possible, it was inevitable that English as a language of learning and teaching would be utilised as a quick and cost-effective solution.

Thus, even if parents want home language education for their children, it is available neither in the curriculum material, nor as a language to take matric examinations in.  The state is thus acting unconstitutionally in not providing such material as, according to Section 6(2) of the Constitution it is supposed to ‘take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of [African languages]’ and also ‘Everyone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable’ (Section 29(2) of the Constitution).

This language issue, coupled with other issues like HIV/AIDS, poor support from home, low socio-economic circumstances, etc, has massive consequences for the youth of South Africa in the yearly decrease in the matric pass rate. By 2000 only 27% of learners who started school in Grade 1 finished with a matriculation certificate (Heugh, 2000:32). This relates to the argument posed by sociolinguists and applied linguists that cognitive development is negatively impacted by education through a language other than a child’s home language (Heugh, 2000:33 & The English Academy of South Africa, 2009:2,5).

In the Revised National Curriculum Statement Grades R-9 (2003:11) it is emphasized that the learner’s ‘home language needs to be strengthened and developed so as to provide a sound foundation for learning additional languages’. This is confirmed by international scientific research which indicates that ‘children need at least 12 years [since birth] of learning their mother tongue’ (Heugh, 2000:29). This creates a basic knowledge of concepts, literacy and basic mathematic skills, something which has been at a worryingly low level the past few years. A sound foundation in home language strengthens the learner’s language with which he/she thinks and reasons, which can at a later stage be translated into English when their English competence is at a high enough level.

For this stage to be reached, ‘most pupils need 6-8 years of learning a second language before they can use it effectively as a medium of learning’ (Heugh, 2000:24). Where English is used as the language of learning and teaching, by the time that learners are competent enough in English to understand everything they are taught, they have missed the biggest part of the previous 6-8 years of education, which was supposed to have built a sound cognitive and content foundation on which to build further knowledge.

Something else that should be considered is the quality of English education which most African language learners receive due to the fact that their teachers would also be second-language speakers of English. Second language speakers have a smaller vocabulary of English words at their disposal and have fewer words to express thoughts and concepts. Learners who have access to English only through the domain of the school will have fewer words to express their answers to questions in the matric exam than a second language learner receiving tuition from a home language English speaker. In practice, teachers would often be tempted to explain more difficult concepts (even in some cases all concepts) in the African language they share with their students so they can express themselves better and the learners can understand better. This deprives the learners of further vocabulary to express themselves in the matric exam as they can only write the matric exam in English or Afrikaans.

This does not mean that parents do not want their children to learn English; in the same study by the PANSALB in 2000, 42% of parents thought that ‘learners should have the opportunity to learn both their mother tongue and English equally well’ (Heugh, 2000:19). English is still, and will always be, a symbolic ‘gateway to a better life’ (Van der Walt, et al. 2009:18) in the multilingual context of South Africa.

Looking at English in this way, it could also be suggested that more elements of Black South African English be admitted into Standard South African English to enhance linguistic tolerance for people with an African language as their home language, but more importantly, to make English more accessible for African language speakers in terms of pronunciation and grammar structure. It is estimated that about half the English speakers in the world are second language speakers (Van der Walt et al., 2009:18-19), thus a perfect British or American grammar and pronunciation is no longer required. Focus should shift to making the language accessible and able to enhance intercultural and international communication.

In line with the fact that children need 12 years of mother-tongue education and take 6-8 years to achieve Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in English, it can be suggested that mother-tongue education take place until the end of Grade 6 with English as an additional language ‘introduced as a subject in Grade 1’ (Department of Education, 2003:7). This will give learners a better opportunity to form a basis in their mother tongue. After this stage is complete, parents could be given the choice of the language of learning and teaching for their children in the GET and FET phases

Being given a choice in GET and FET implies that there should be a choice of language for learning and teaching available. Currently the choice is between Afrikaans and English. The Education department needs to invest in the development of the African languages in South Africa and the translation of handbooks and study material. This can be done on a provincial level and could start with the biggest languages to make the implementation of such language development more practical and cost-effective.

An added option for the classroom could be the implementation of bilingual or multilingual education; using both the home language of the learner plus English in the classroom, making learners better equipped to handle academic material in English. This way the learners have the opportunity for optimum cognitive development coupled with a better competence in English in preparation for the public domain and English tertiary education. Multilingualism could furthermore enhance cognitive versatility. Implementation of multilingualism in schools would have to be decided upon by the governing bodies of schools according to the needs of the children in the school and the parents involved.

The purpose of Bantu education was the training of an uneducated mass of people for manual labour in South Africa. At the moment, with only 27% of learners starting school in South Africa being able to pass matric, of which only a small percentage have good enough marks to be admitted to universities and colleges, it can be argued that the current education system is doing much the same as Bantu education years ago. Until there is an equal value put to every language in education in South Africa, there will never be equal education in South Africa.

Bibliography

Bam, G. 2010. Mother tongue matters. Cape Times. 22 January.

Department of Education: Republic of South Africa. 2003. National Curriculum Statement Grades 10 – 12: English First Additional Language. Pretoria: Department of Education. p. 9-11.

Department of Education: Republic of South Africa. 2003. Revised National Curriculum Statement Grades R-9 (Schools). In Venter, Malcolm (comp.), Assignment 1: The role of English in South Africa. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University (class handout). p. 7.

Heugh, K. 2000. The Case Against Bilingual and Multilingual Education in South Africa. PRAESA Occasional Papers No. 6. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.

Jeffery, C & Mesthrie, R. 2010. Extract from: Domains of Language Use: A Fundamental Conception for Framing Language Policy in South Africa. In Venter, Malcolm (comp.), Assignment 1: The role of English in South Africa. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University (class handout). pp. 4-6

Schrire, J. 2010. ‘English is crucial’. Cape Times. 20 January.

Smit, U. & Verhoef, M. 2003. Global norms and local requirements for Black South African English (‘BSAE’)? – A pilot study of teacher’s assessment and perceptions of learner texts. South African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 21: 153-168.

Statistics South Africa. 2001. Census: Key results. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.

The Constitution of South Africa.

The English Academy of Southern Africa. 2009. English in a Multilingual Situation. In Venter, Malcolm (comp.), Assignment 1: The role of English in South Africa. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University (class handout). p. 1-3

Van der Walt, Christa. 1998. Justifying their existence: South African varieties of English. English Academy Review, 15(1): 42-51.

Van der Walt, C., Evans, R. & Kilfoil, W.R. 2009. Learn 2 Teach. Pretoria: Van Schaik Publishers.

Regardt Visagie

PGCE student, Stellenbosch University (2010)

Before commencing a discussion on the specific role English plays in South African schools, it might prove fruitful to briefly contemplate the linguistic landscape of the nation as a whole. South Africa hosts a melting pot of languages, most of which are endowed with official status by the South African Constitution. The Constitution recognizes a total of eleven official languages, all of which must ‘enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably’ (SA Constitution, subsection 6, no. 4). This constitutional assertion often generates the impression that all official languages in South Africa also enjoy equal usage. Although this might be the case if ‘usage’ includes situations where languages are used as informal or private forms of communication, the reality is that in most formal contexts such as professional environments or sectors of commerce, the majority of languages fall into disuse, except for English. A similar situation to that in South Africa replicates itself on a global scale. Of all the major languages that are spoken in the world, none but English has truly international reach. This is because English has established itself as a ‘language of global communication that helps with access to jobs and advancement’ (Learn 2 teach, 17). English dominates in those spheres of public and professional life, both locally and internationally, that are indispensable for citizens of modern society. It is the functional value of English and the essential economic potential it offers that has made it presently such a major linguistic force and a continual object of desire.

Viewed against the backdrop sketched above, the role of schools in South Africa should be evident. It is the obligatory role of schools to produce learners that have sufficient command of English to function meaningfully within a society that is linguistically organized in and through the English language. Schools therefore play a functional role in that they have to produce functioning individuals. Further on in the discussion I hope to show that this ‘evident’ role assigned to schools might in fact not be so apparent. However, first I would like to reinforce the functional value of schools by introducing a theory of society as expounded by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. My reasons for employing Luhmann’s rendering of systems theory are twofold: on the one hand, it represents to my mind an accurate perspective on modern society in general, and on the other, it provides the conceptual tools to analyze the functional role schools and communication play in particular.

Luhmann’s social systems theory provides us with an encompassing vision of society in which people participate in modern society, or what he refers to as a ‘functionally differentiated society’, entirely through means of communication. Today’s globalized society is founded upon a wide variety of communication systems, each with its unique way of functioning – hence Luhmann’s description of modern society as functionally differentiated (Moeller, 2006:4). The economic system, for example, functions on the basis of the distribution of money, whilst the political system functions on the basis of the distribution of power. By purchasing goods at your local supermarket you participate in the economic system and by registering your vote on a ballot you partake in the political system. In the technical language of systems theory one would say you are communicating economically or communicating politically. It is important to note that one has to adopt the already-in-place code of that specific system, by using money or voting, in order to communicate in it (2006:6). Apart from the specific code in which these systems communicate, they also communicate via a specific set of semantics. Although semantics is defined somewhat broadly within the context of Luhmann’s theory, it refers to the way in which society produces meaning or how it makes sense of things by producing discourse (2006:224). To further elucidate the notion of semantics I would like to relate it to the term ‘domain’, a term that had its origin in sociolinguistic circles. John Fishman coined the term domain in 1972 to refer to different contexts that characteristically necessitate the use of different languages or language types in a heterogeneous (linguistically and otherwise) society (Mesthrie, Jeffery 2007). Domains may include physical settings like the home, the classroom, a shop, and the media etc, but include more typically the ‘general activity’ (2007) that is traditionally associated with a particular setting. A courtroom, for example, represents a domain in which Latin phrases associated with legal concepts are used frequently alongside English. Legal environments also call for a very ‘ceremonial’ and somewhat ‘condemnatory’ variety of language. Similar to the way in which domains influence the particular language or variety of language being used, the different systems in Luhmann’s society would determine the specific semantics being used. Domains or systems ought not to be conceptualized in terms of spatial dimensions as having a fixed structure with definite boundaries (Cilliers, 1998:4). They rather act as conceptual tools to render the linguistic functionality of society intelligible. Domains and systems often overlap and since they are interdependent they often influence one another reciprocally. Although in theory no permanent or rigid hierarchies are identified in society, certain patterns do establish themselves over time. Two obvious examples of powerful systems would be the mass media and the economic system.

The economic system is especially influential and has certain implications for how other systems function. One such system would be the educational system. Because these systems are ‘coupled’, the educational system has to adapt and feed the need of the dominating economic system. The semantics in which the economic system operates would in turn require of the educational system that it communicates by using the same semantics (2006:18). As was mentioned earlier, although in somewhat less technical language, English, both locally as well as globally, constitutes this set of semantics, and more specifically a very formal variant of English. Schools in South Africa cannot escape the reality that they form part of a functionalist society which demands that they produce English-speaking learners. It is important to note that within society as envisaged by Luhmann, humans have very limited agency (2006:79). Society and its different subsystems are autonomous and functionally so. If citizens cannot adopt the required semantics of a particular system, society would simply shut them out, setting them on a slippery slope to intellectual poverty and ultimately to socio-economic poverty.

The latter is the state of affairs in South Africa and, sadly, it is due to external factors. This is the case because another systemic reality presents itself in South Africa. There are systems, domestic and private, that might not have such a significant outworking on the functioning of schools, but affect the greatest sections of the South African population. These are the cultures and communities that speak languages other than English. The government places a high premium on maintaining and nurturing the identity of these cultures and their associated languages. This has to be absolute priority, especially in a country such as South Africa that has a tragic and sensitive history pertaining to cultural intolerance. The importance of the appreciation of the multilingual reality in South Africa is reflected in the Constitution’s instruction that the state must take real measures to ‘elevate the status and advance the use’ of indigenous languages (SA Constitution, subsection 6, no.2).

Even so, the status and usage of indigenous languages are diminishing rapidly. A great number of learners trade their mother tongue for English as early as Grade R when they enter the General Education and Training (GET) band. This is due to the growing national awareness of the status of English as a gateway to economic advancement. Apart from the discouraging effect that this has on the growth of indigenous cultures, the choice to immerse learners completely in a language that is foreign to them at such an early stage has a negative effect on personal development as well. There seem to be consensus amongst academics that the best way to introduce and develop a second language is by doing so in conjunction with the development of the learner’s home language. A child’s cognitive abilities are developed in parallel to his linguistic abilities at a very juvenile phase of development. If an additional language has to be learnt is has to be done so after a secure platform of linguistic capacity has already been established. In a lot of respects the Education Department of South Africa carries knowledge of this and has made provision, at least in theory, for the development of additional languages. The Additive Approach to Multilingualism policy as set out in The Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) requires that learners learn their home language and at least one additional language. The aim is that ‘learners become competent in their additional language, while their home language is maintained and developed’. Acquiring a third language (a Second Additional Language), which is usually an African Language, is even encouraged in order to promote cross-cultural dialogue. Both the Revised National Curriculum Statement as well as the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) state that all official languages can be offered on a Home Language level, First Additional Language level, and Second Additional Language level. According to these official statements, if the outcomes of learning a First Additional Language are met, a learner would be able to utilize this language as a medium of instruction. A learner would have acquired the basic skills of communication such as listening and reading, but will also be able to produce language through writing and speaking. These abilities form the elementary requirements that are compulsory for attaining Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) (Learn 2 Teach, 15). CALP differs from Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) in that the latter are sufficient for mere social interactions of a private or informal sort. CALP embodies the level of proficiency that is required if one were to use language in an academic context. In many ways CALP is also the prerequisite for functioning in society’s professional and economic spheres.

Categorizing languages in terms of Home Language and First Additional Language in South Africa is a misnomer in many circumstances. Numerous learners take English as their Home Language even though it may in actual fact be their First Additional or even their Second Additional Language. For speakers of Northern Sotho, for example, Afrikaans is learnt as a First Additional Language and English as a Second Additional Language even though some of these learners receive instruction in English. This often causes the learners to neglect their mother tongue before it has reached the desired level of proficiency that is needed if an additional language is to be successfully acquired. The development of English as an additional language suffers as a result.

Some learners do opt to receive instruction in their mother tongue and take English as an additional language. This option proves successful in many Afrikaans-medium schools. In these cases Afrikaans is formally developed right through the Further Education and Training (FET) band, and more importantly this is done so together with English. These learners normally don’t experience severe problems when the switch to English as a medium of instruction is made at tertiary level. In the majority of South African schools, however, this luxury isn’t on offer. Many so-called black schools do present English as a First Additional Language, whilst instructing in the home language of the learners, but because of indifferent bureaucratic support and a lack of resources, human and otherwise, they do not reach the desired outcomes (Young, 1995:107).

The role of English in South Africa is indeed precarious. In this discussion I have attempted to show that two confronting linguistic realities present themselves in South Africa. On the one hand, English represents an indispensable language of economic betterment, and on the other, precisely because of its indispensability, it threatens to consume South Africa’s less essential indigenous languages. I have also tried to show that in so many cases an attempt to bridge this disjunction ends in failure. Many black non-English speaking learners who prefer to receive instruction in their mother tongue are left linguistically incompetent to enter the global market which operates chiefly in English.  Other black non-English speaking learners enter schools in which English is the medium of instruction with the hope of attaining a better future. But without the critical development of their mother tongue their development of English fails even more so. From the perspective of Luhmann’s social systems theory, theoretical attempts to transcend this tension by formulating a language policy in South Africa by regulating use of languages in terms of ‘domains’ seem to miss the point. According to the Preamble of the English Academy of Southern Africa the term ‘domain’ is ‘helpful in recognizing that certain languages can predominate in certain specific areas of use’, without the existence of other domains (such as domestic domains where indigenous cultures still flourish) ‘being denied or resented.’ This statement is also an attempt to bypass the tension inherent to the constitutional assertion that all official languages should enjoy equal status, but this seemingly effortless and passive instruction, however, does not seem feasible if one takes into account the central economic system that is actively and increasingly becoming a totalizing system that consumes and shapes society after itself. Although the role of English might resemble a double-edged sword and even though it needs to be handled with care, it is critical that it is indeed being handled. Active intervention from the Government and the Department of Education is crucial if the indigenous languages are to survive.

Sources cited

English in a Multilingual Situation, The English Academy of Southern Africa.

The South African Constitution, subsection 6, Languages.

Revised National Curriculum Statement Grades R-9 (Schools).

National Curriculum Statement for English First Additional Language.

Cilliers, P. 1998. Complexity and Postmodernism. London: Routledge.

Mesthrie, R. Jeffery, C. 2007. Domains of Language Use: a Fundamental Concept for Framing Language Policy in South Africa.

Moeller, H. 2006. Luhmann Explained. From Souls to Systems. Peru, Illinois: Carus Publishing Company.

Van der Walt, C. Evans, R. Kilfoil, W.R. Learn 2 Teach. Pretoria: Van Schaik Publishing.

Young, D. 1995. Preparing Teacher Trainees to Teach in Multilingual Classes. Johannesburg: Heinemann.