Linguists may hold the key to South Africa's future, says Rhodes University education lecturer, Professor Sarah Murray.
Murray was explaining, at the Interactions and Interfaces conference hosted recently by the university’s Department of English Language and Linguistics, how badly the English-language teaching model had served most South African children.
Linguists may hold the key to South Africa's future, says Rhodes University education lecturer, Professor Sarah Murray.
Murray was explaining, at the Interactions and Interfaces conference hosted recently by the university’s Department of English Language and Linguistics, how badly the English-language teaching model had served most South African children.
By the end of Grade 3, Murray said, most African first-language students struggled to switch to learning in English and their shaky foundations in literacy would haunt them throughout their education. Here, said Murray, linguists could “fill in the gaps”, providing research on different teaching methods for different languages, thus contributing to a better quality education.
Murray said South African children’s reading performance was weak, even compared to other African countries with smaller education budgets, and despite attempts by the Department of Basic Education to improve it, progress was hampered by a desperate need for research into the requirements of teaching English to young African-language speakers.
Given that there were vast quantities of international research on English literacy, Murray said it was no surprise the South African curriculum was based on this English-language model.
However, linguistic differences between African languages and English meant teaching methods needed to differ, or children learning a new language were doomed to struggle.
The problem was worsened by the fact that African language reading materials were usually poorly translated from English and were difficult for pupils to make sense of. Murray said there was an urgent need for curriculum development tailored to the needs of different languages, as well as an evaluation of textbooks, because this was what truly took learning into the classroom.
“African languages are worth looking at on their own and not just translated,” Murray said.
The joint conference was an annual meeting of the Linguistics Society of Southern African, the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association and the South African Association of Language Teachers and brought together linguists, language teachers and various experts and academics under a common concern for different conceptions of language and interactions between people.
