Big language changes planned for schools in South Africa

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says her department will move forward with plans to incorporate mother-tongue languages ​​at the country’s schools.

Answering in a parliamentary Q&A on Wednesday (9 March), Motshekga said that one of the biggest reasons why South African children have such poor reading comprehension skills is that they are essentially learning in a ‘foreign language’ by being taught in English.

She said that the government had already held successful mother-tongue pilot projects in the Eastern Cape, and was looking to expand these to schools in other provinces.

As part of the pilot, 2,015 schools are using IsiXhosa and Sesotho as the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) beyond the foundation phase. Learners in these schools are taught Mathematics, Natural Science and Technology in their home languages ​​IsiXhosa and Sesotho. “The bottom line is that we need to adopt mother-tongue instruction in South Africa,” she said.

However, the minister acknowledged that there were issues with moving to a purely mother-tongue-based system, noting that it was likely impossible to have a pure class in Sotho or Xhosa in Gauteng the way similar classes have been held in the Eastern Cape.

She added that in classes teachers use multiple different languages ​​to help children learn and get their point across. However, when it comes to assessments – which are typically done in English – they are once again forced to grapple with a language they did not understand while learning.

“They are no longer being tested on their cognitive development or understanding (0f the work). You are now testing their language abilities, which is a problem.

“Government has begun the process of changing this and the next step is to assess them in the language they are taught – so that we are able asses performance and not language proficiency.”

She added that government would have to use technology and other systems to effectively translate complicated scientific and mathematical concepts into languages ​​which do not necessarily have the same terminology.

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