Research is clear that children learn most effectively in the language/s they know best. In wealthy countries, it is the norm for children to learn in their home languages and then study new languages at school. But this is not the case in most postcolonial nations such as South Africa.
Like all growing children, those who speak African languages come to school with rich linguistic resources. But, unlike English-speaking children, these are not celebrated and developed for learning. They are seen rather as stumbling blocks to children’s educational success.
Our own and other colleagues’ school-based research over a number of years shows how children’s English language proficiency is routinely praised and seen as a marker of their intelligence. At the same time, children’s African language proficiency and bi/multilingualism are at best ignored — and at worst derided.
In most South African schools, children receive their first three years of instruction in a familiar (African) home language, while learning English for 2-4 hours a week. They are then forced to make a sudden transition to learning everything in English from grade 4 onwards, with all textbooks, assessments and learning materials provided only in that language.
From grade 4, the first year of their switch to English, they use the same textbooks and write the same formal assessments as English-speaking children immersed in English since birth. This is a gross injustice.
If a child does not understand the language of teaching and learning, they have no hope of understanding the concepts being taught, their textbooks, or the tests they have to write.
The majority of readers will easily solve the simple problem 3+3 = x. But how many could solve the problem: Thami i Lulu mają po 3 jabłka. Ile mają razem jabłek? (Polish) Or, closer to home, how many English-speaking South Africans could solve the problem: UThami noLulu umntu ngamnye unama-apile ama-3. Mangaphi ama-apile abanawo ewonke (English translation: Thami and Lulu have 3 apples each. How many apples do they have altogether?)
This is the challenge pupils who speak African languages experience all day and every day from grade 4 onwards.
Advanced proficiency in English is recognised as critically important to access higher education and employment opportunities. It is most often the desire for English proficiency that fuels the continuing use of English as a language of learning, teaching and assessment (LOLTA), even though so many of our children underperform and drop out of schooling in which they cannot fully participate.
However, it is a misconception that to become proficient in English children need to learn all their subjects in English only. Learning through English only in environments where there are few highly proficient speakers of the language does not enable children to learn the language. Rather, English LOLTA leads to rote learning, choral repetition and memorisation to pass assessments. With monolingual English LOLTA, not only are children prevented from understanding curriculum content, but they also do not develop high proficiency in English. What they do learn is that their own languages are not worth anything, and that they themselves are somehow deficient and do not have what it takes to succeed at school.
A further misconception is that African languages are not developed enough to be used in teaching subjects such as mathematics and science. However, bi/multilingual concept dictionaries and textbooks in African languages already exist for these subjects
A further misconception is that African languages are not developed enough to be used in teaching subjects such as mathematics and science. However, bi/multilingual concept dictionaries and textbooks in African languages already exist for these subjects.
Parents and pupils should not have to choose between home-language LOLTA and English proficiency. There is a solution in bilingual education that uses more than one language as the LOLTA, which enables pupils to develop advanced proficiency in two languages: their home language and English.
South Africa has an established and successful history of bilingual education for Afrikaans and English speakers, where both languages are used for teaching, learning and assessment. However, 30 years into democracy, English and Afrikaans are still the only two languages in which matriculation examinations are available. Now is the time to make a different kind of bilingual education available for all children.
A viable form of bilingual education for South Africa is mother-tongue-based bilingual education (MTBBE). MTBBE involves using the child’s most familiar language (his or her mother tongue) as the LOLTA in the foundation phase (grades R-3), and then continuing to use the child’s mother tongue as the LOLTA while adding another language (English) as a complementary LOLTA in the intermediate phase (grades 4-6) and beyond. This means content subjects such as mathematics, natural sciences & technology, and social sciences are taught in more than one language. Assessments are made available in two languages.
Equally essential to successful learning is children’s literacy development. Being able to read and write a wide variety of texts gives children access to knowledge and opportunities to produce knowledge. In most education systems, including ours, producing written answers to questions remains the dominant form of assessment. Yet just as English LOLTA assumes an idealised learner who is English speaking, for too long the teaching of literacy in African languages has been based on approaches designed for English. Curriculum developers and writers of materials have been monolingual English speakers or bilinguals in English and Afrikaans without deep knowledge of African languages.
Current government-supported early literacy interventions focus exclusively on reading, with an emphasis on decoding (learning letter-sound relationships) and reading aloud (oral reading fluency). What is easily assessed by tests based on the US developed early grade reading assessment has become the priority of teaching reading.
While decoding skills are important, they will not enable children to understand and produce the wide variety of texts required for success in schooling. Because literacy is a deeply context-specific social practice, rather than a “thing” one either has or does not have, children’s opportunities to interact with a wide range of different texts for different purposes is crucial to their literacy development. This is a challenging learning journey that requires high motivation.
Middle-class English-speaking children have countless opportunities to engage with texts, including shared book reading, and to experiment or play around with writing their own texts, at home. They have access to literature in the well-stocked school libraries they visit weekly. While children who speak African languages may come with experience of oral storytelling practices, which provide a wonderful springboard into literacy, these are ignored.
For the typical South African child, whose main interaction with texts is at school, an over-emphasis on decoding skills robs them of crucial encounters with “rich literacies”. Instead, they are exposed only to impoverished literacies that will not motivate or enable them to read and write the variety of text types needed to learn in different subject areas, such as the natural sciences, history and mathematics in the upper primary years. The simplistic view of reading through decoding will leave poor children playing a never-ending catch-up game with their counterparts in middle-class schools.
Understanding the language/s of instruction and being able to read and write a wide range of texts are essential and part of the basic infrastructure for successful learning — just as running water, working toilets and electricity are. Minister of basic education Siviwe Gwarube’s indication that literacy and MTBBE will be an important priority in her budget speech in a recent NCOP address is encouraging. We urge the minister to prioritise the needs and experiences of typical South African children by supporting rich literacy interventions designed from the logic of African languages and giving pupils the opportunity to learn in a language they understand.
• McKinney is a professor of language education in the UCT School of Education; Guzula is a senior lecturer in the UCT School of Education; Tyler is a senior researcher at the University of the Western Cape Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research; Kell is an associate professor emerita of language and literacy education in the UCT School of Education; Abdulatief is a lecturer in the UCT School of Education. All except Guzula are members of the bua-lit collective
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