PANDOR'S AFRICAN LANGUAGES PLAN FACES BIG HURDLES
Theresa Smith & Terri-Liza Fortein

The Cape Argus
May 18 2005

... Not a single student has qualified as a teacher of Xhosa from the University of Cape Town in the past two years. In addition, the number of students studying African languages at universities has declined sharply; there is a shortage of textbooks and set books in indigenous languages; and a lack of research into subjects such as normal child development in African languages.

In her budget speech in parliament yesterday, Pandor said the further education and training curriculum would kick in next year, with Grade 10 pupils being offered a new package of subject choices. These include a stipulation that they study two languages, one to be the medium of instruction and the other to be any one of the 11 official languages.

The announcement was welcomed by Mzolisi Sojola, acting principal at Fezeka High School in Gugulethu, but he said English would remain the language of instruction. "It would not be advantageous for my students not to have English as one of their subjects." Sojola said even if he wanted to offer Xhosa and Zulu exclusively, he would not be in a position to do so, as they lacked teachers qualified to teach those languages, and necessary books.

Crain Soudien of UCT's school of education said not a single student had qualified as a teacher of Xhosa in the past two years, although the department was working on this. Teaching methods in African indigenous languages had not improved over time. "The teaching of these subjects in schools has historically been poor, even in schools where the majority of children are learning these as first languages.

"The teaching itself is uninspired, old-fashioned and has not kept pace with developments in other languages like Afrikaans and English," Soudien said.

Professor Felix Banda of the University of the Western Cape's linguistics department said he thought that making English optional was a good move, because it would help ensure that pupils maintained their cultural identity.

Similar changes should be introduced at tertiary institutions. "If we have students coming from a high school where they were instructed in an African language, they will have trouble adjusting to being taught in English once they reach tertiary level." But capacity was a problem, he conceded.

Maureen Robinson, head of the department of education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, said none of the students there specialised in teaching languages, and their medium of instruction was English. Most of the students studied Xhosa as a third language or medium of communication. Although they would not necessarily be able to teach their subjects in Xhosa, they could help Xhosa students understand concepts better.

The shortage of students learning African languages at tertiary level affected more than just subjects taught at school. Sandile Gxilishe, associate professor in the African Languages and Literatures department at UCT, said the number of students majoring in an African language had fallen drastically over the past five years. "African language departments at all universities are complaining."

Gxilishe said African language graduates were needed not only to teach languages but also to do research into subjects such as child language development in African languages. For example, speech therapists diagnose speech problems in children with learning disabilities, but there were no standards against which a speech therapist could gauge whether a child was learning his mother tongue of Xhosa properly. No academic had researched what kind of sounds a two-year-old Xhosa child should be able to make.