Figure 1
Speak Zulu with Us
Sandra Sanneh - Yale University
Product at a glance
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Product type: |
Language tutorial for beginners |
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Language: |
- Zulu |
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- Level: Adult Beginner |
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- Activities: Pronunciation exercises, dialogue repetition, grammar completion exercises |
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Media format: |
1 CD-ROM |
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Computer platforms: |
Windows 95+ |
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Hardware requirements: |
PC: 486/100Mhz |
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RAM: 16 MB |
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Hard disk: 16 MB |
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CD-ROM 2x |
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Sound: Windows compatible sound card & speakers |
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Video: 256 color SVGA, 640x480 screen or better |
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Supplemental software: |
QuickTime 4 for PC or Macintosh (included on CD-ROM) |
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Documentation |
71-page monochrome manual |
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Price: |
Individual copy: List price +/- $65 (exchange rate dependant) Available through Amazon for $70. Site license: Available from African Voices |
General Description
IsiZulu,
the language of the amaZulu (Zulu people), is generally referred to in English
as Zulu, and is widely spoken as a lingua franca by the black community throughout
South Africa. Speakers of Zulu as a first language come from south-eastern South
Africa (KwaZulu-Natal) and from central urban centers. Zulu is closely related
to IsiXhosa, SiSwati and SiNdebele, which together make up the Nguni cluster
of languages in southern Africa. Nguni is the southernmost cluster of the large
Bantu linguistic group which forms part of the Niger-Kordofanian family in Greenberg’s
classification.
This CD-ROM was published in 1999, and is second in a series that began with Speak Xhosa with Us. The format of Speak Zulu with Us is similar to that of the first unit of the Xhosa materials. Speak Zulu with Us was previously reviewed by Laura Grant (1999) and Donna Dudley (1999). Copies of these reviews can be consulted on the African Voices website: http://www.isixhosa.co.za/html/rindex.htm.
Summary of features
This CD-ROM and accompanying manual provide an introductory
Zulu tutorial for adult users (upper level high school and above). The materials
are organized into seven units labeled as follows:
Unit 1 Pronunciation
Unit 2 Introductions
Unit 3 Greetings
Unit 4 Who are These [People]?
Unit 5 What do you do?
Unit 6 Summary
Unit 7 Vocabulary
There is no introduction to the materials, either on the CD-ROM or in the manual. The sleeve of the CD-ROM gives technical advice on how to use the program.
Unit 1 Pronunciation The inventory of Zulu phonemes includes many consonants unfamiliar to English speakers, and so the student is welcomed to this section with the warning that it is "quite long and detailed." The student is then taken through a long list of phonemes beginning with the five vowels, and continuing with the "difficult sounds" such as clicks, lateral fricatives and ejectives, for all of which help in correctly placing the tongue is given in non-technical language. Each phoneme is pronounced in a word, and contrasted with the sound closest to it. The student is advised to use this section as a reference rather than trying to master all the sounds at once. As is common in Zulu teaching materials, tone is dealt with only briefly, and in keeping with standard orthographic convention, tone is not marked.
Units 2-6 Each of the five Lesson Units has the following components:
Conversation In these interactive segments the student is initially introduced to six members of a family through video segments. In later units the members reappear, giving more information about themselves, and in the final units there is a conversation between young adults at a social occasion.
Figure 1
The video segments can be viewed with or without the text in Zulu / English, and the student can supply or repeat the dialogues. The manual contains all movie dialogues in Zulu and English as well as monochrome drawings of the actors.
Culture These segments consist of notes on etiquette connected with greeting, and information about family terminology and structure. They are not interactive. Some additional cultural information is given in the manual.
Grammar The grammar notes in these segments are extensive and detailed, and the information is repeated in the manual. They are minimally interactive in that the student can point to the Zulu examples to hear them pronounced.
Exercises These segments contain exercises of four types:
Figure 2
In each case, the student can hear and see the correct response. The manual contains additional exercises in the same format as those on the CD-ROM.
Vocabulary The lexical items from each unit are listed in a glossary at the end of the unit. Items are listed in the form in which they appear in the text, which is not necessarily how they would be listed in a dictionary. This is very helpful for beginners, since no knowledge of grammar is required.
For example:
Z: banumzana E: gentlemen (vocative form; cf abanumzana, dict:-numzana),
Z: ukubona E: to see (infinitive form; dict: -bona).
The student can view the vocabulary in either language or in both simultaneously, and can search for a word by entering the first few letters in either language. Some entries have "Extra comments" such as the grammatical class of a noun, or the root form of a verb.
Figure 3
Because of the way the grammar sections are organized, the first lesson unit has 307 vocabulary items. Other units have approximately one hundred each.
Unit 7 Vocabulary
This unit consists of a list of all the lexical items occurring in the preceding units. The organization is similar to that of the Unit segments. The manual has an English-Zulu glossary that lists all nouns in their singular form, with plural indicated, and lists verbs in their stem form, as is the convention for dictionaries. Over 600 words are included in both the CD-ROM and the manual glossaries.
Evaluation
Technological features
Speak Zulu with Us is a clearly organized collection of materials that
can be easily navigated by the student. Loading is a little slow, and the attractive
introductory graphics can be skipped on subsequent entry by clicking on the
image, though this might not be evident to every user. Navigation between and
within units is clear, following a simple framework with menu options always
accessible via a reveal tab and a program map tab. The video segments move at
reasonable speed and may be paused. The sound quality and the clarity of speech
vary from one segment to another and from one actor to another, and some segments
are quite difficult to hear. Students can replay each video segment with or
without text in one or both languages, and can record themselves repeating the
dialogue or responding to one or other speaker.
Figure 4
Activities (Procedure)
In the instructional section, Units 2-6, there
are two kinds of activity. There are audio-lingual exercises drawing on the
video dialogues, and there are grammar exercises that involve matching, moving
or introducing words and sentences. The activities based on the video segments
involve repetition and completion of written items using information from the
videos. The grammar activities require the student to enter a word or sentence
in response to a question, to match the correct affix to a word or sentence,
or to match a word or sentence to a drawing or photograph. The repeated answer
and a check or an ‘x’ tell the student whether or not the response
is correct. For some exercises ‘Correct!’ appears at the bottom of
the screen. Most of these activities make only minimal use of the software’s
capabilities, and they are designed around grammatical rules rather than communicative
events. Nevertheless, each one is carefully constructed to drill the required
grammatical element, and they offer a quantity of drills that are easy to operate,
that students can work through alone, and on which they can get feedback.
The Grammar Reference notes are detailed, and though only minimally interactive, students can click on all items in Zulu to hear them pronounced. The grammatical information is clearly expressed and well sequenced.
The Culture segment is text only, and not interactive, making it the weakest component of the materials.
The Vocabulary section is well organized and user-friendly, permitting the student to search for a word in either language, but there are no links from lexical items to items in the grammar section.
Teacher Fit (Approach)
Speak Zulu with Us is designed for use by the student working alone,
and it offers " a guide to elementary conversation in Zulu" and "a
solid foundation in the basic grammatical concepts of the language". The
materials could also be used as a text for an elementary level course. The video
segments of conversations cover three communicative events — greeting,
making introductions and describing one’s occupation — performed by
speakers of different ages, but emphasizing young adults in a university-style
setting, and the accompanying activities are audio-lingual in approach. For
example, the unit entitled Ukubingelela Nokuvalelisa ‘Saying Hello
and Goodbye’ offers four greetings between people of different ages, and
in situations of differing formality. Used in the classroom, these segments
offer a useful range of models for student-created dialogues, and a resource
for discussions on culture and linguistic etiquette. The specific cultural context
for each segment is unfortunately not given in the manual, and the Culture segments
on the CD-ROM tend to be limited to explanations of terminology. Both the CD-ROM
and the accompanying 71-page manual include very detailed grammar notes that
are sufficiently complete to be used as a primary reference during the first,
and possibly also the second semester of study. The accompanying exercises,
which are structural in approach, could be used for reinforcement and review.
Learner Fit (Design)
The organization of materials on this CD-ROM
is clear and simple to operate. Each of the seven units has a menu page with
similar layout and theme tune, and the student can navigate quickly and easily
between them. The interactive vocabulary sections accompanying each unit enable
the student to find items easily and without having to exit the unit. However
the detailed grammar sections, in particular those accompanying the first lesson
(Unit 2), might seem overwhelming to a student studying alone who is not experienced
in language learning. For example, Zulu nouns are divided among thirteen grammatical
genders or classes, each identified by a prefix, and students must eventually
master these and their accompanying affixal morphology if they are to form grammatically
correct sentences. Zulu language instructors (and those of other languages of
the ‘Bantu’ linguistic family) differ on how early to introduce the
full complexity of this ‘Noun Class System’. Speak Zulu with Us
presents it all in the first lesson, even though it is not required for
the conversation segment of this unit, and even though this means confronting
the student with vocabulary such as: Z: amathe E: saliva, Z: izono
E: sins and Z: uvo E: opinion. As reference, however, these notes are
excellent.
Socio-cultural representation
Speak Zulu with Us is made by experienced
teachers of Zulu in a South African university, and they have used an urban
setting and Zulu speakers, including two students of Zulu, to perform in the
video segments. As a result, the student benefits from a range of idiolects
and accents. The topics of the five lessons, dealing as they do with beginning
conversation between strangers, have direct relevance for the language learner,
and in the final segment the student can watch a brief social encounter at a
gathering of young people.
The Culture segments, by contrast, are disappointing. They are brief, not interactive, and some are not connected in substance to the material covered in the Conversation segments. In addition, some include statements that are general to the point of meaninglessness, such as the following example taken from Unit 4, which deals with occupations:
As we mentioned in Lesson One, greetings in Zulu culture are very important. A mere nod of recognition or lifting of the eyebrows, or a muttered "Hi" would be considered offensive to the average Zulu. This is particularly true of rural areas, where people have more time to spend on social niceties. In the rural areas one greets not only people one knows, but also strangers.
The Culture segments are also oddly incomplete. For example, the first lesson, (Unit 2) introduces some family terminology through the video segments. This is supplemented with additional terms in the Culture segment, but only six terms are offered, and these have been chosen not to complete the set of terms, but rather as examples of the specificity of Zulu terminology in comparison with that of English. In the final lesson (Unit 6) the social mixer setting provides an opportunity for cultural information about interaction between student-age people, but instead the Culture segment deals with names, a topic better covered in Unit 3, which is titled Ngobani? (Who are they?).
The manual has illustrations of two kinds: there are competent drawings of the characters in the video segments, and there are drawings of generic household items. What is missing is some pictorial representation of social settings and cultural artifacts specific to Zulu and South African culture. These might include a festival or marriage, beadwork, traditional regalia, musical instruments and pottery.
Summary
Speak Zulu with Us offers a combination of video segments of elementary
conversation with accompanying activities, and a detailed set of notes on grammar
with accompanying exercises. There are also notes on culture, and an interactive
glossary, printed as English-Zulu vocabulary in the manual. The material on
the CD-ROM is printed in the accompanying manual. Though the interactive activities
are somewhat limited in their variety, these materials have much to offer both
the Zulu instructor and the student working alone. Since these materials are
similar to those covered in Unit 1 of the companion Speak Xhosa with Us,
we look forward to seeing the remaining materials in the future.
Scaled rating (1 low-5 high)
Implementation possibilities: 4
Pedagogical features: 4
Socio-linguistic accuracy: 3
Content: 3.5
Linguistic Accuracy: 4.5
Use of computer potential: 2
Technical Performance: 5
Ease of use: 5
Documentation: 4
Over-all evaluation: 4
Value for money: 5
Producer Details
Developer/distributor
Name: African Voices
Address: No 3 Arthur Road, Muizenberg, 7945, South Africa.
Phone: +27 (21) 788-3954
Fax: +27 (21) 788-3940
Email: info@africanvoices.co.za
WWW: http://www.africanvoices.co.za/
Reviewer Information
Sandra Sanneh teaches southern African languages at Yale University
and is Director of the Yale Program in African Languages.
Reviewer Contact
Sandra Sanneh
Yale Program in African Languages
P.O. Box 208206
New Haven CT 06520-8206
Phone: (203) 432-1179
Fax: ( 203) 432-5963
Email: sandra.sanneh@yale.edu
References:
Grant, L. I-Technology Review, November 16 1999.
Dudley, D. Mail and Guardian Review, November 16 1999.