A much more flexible and open teaching and language policy would help teachers and pupils to enable a meaningful learning environment in a multilingual and diverse classroom setting.
Learning in their mother tongue facilitates children’s ability to learn another language.
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It’s hailed as one of the greatest works of fiction to emerge from Africa. But Things Fall Apart was written in English, sparking debate about the colonisation of language.
Swahili is one of East Africa’s largest languages.
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Over the years, our understanding of how language and learning are linked has shifted and changed. There is ample evidence about the value of mother-tongue-based multilingual education.
A South African Buddhist celebrates the Chinese New Year at Nan Hua Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstpruit, South Africa.
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Universities pay too little attention to the knowledge and experiences that students bring to their institutions from different cultures and backgrounds.
English has been reshaped in Africa’s exceptionally multilingual context.
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In Africa, standard English dominates in formal institutions. But in everyday usage it is supplanted by the continent’s abundance of languages – and the varieties of English these gave rise to.
Students at Stellenbosch University call for Afrikaans to be scrapped as the institution’s main language.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
Those who don’t want Stellenbosch University to make English the main language of instruction have invoked South Africa’s Constitution - but the assumptions underlying their arguments are false.
Whether you read to your kids or they read alone, share stories from and about Africa with them.
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Traditional African stories often tackle big, occasionally scary and serious themes. This is even true in children’s stories – though there’s plenty of room for silly fun, too.
Gabriel Kenny, aged five, gets to grips with Mandarin characters as part of a US school program.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
There is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in schools – and this will see African languages bumped even further down the pecking order.
English is Uganda’s official language - but wouldn’t it make sense to adopt a few more along with it?
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The stories of and attitudes to three particular languages – English, Swahili and Luganda – provide an interesting starting point for a debate around Uganda’s language policy.
Translating notes into ‘deep’ or ‘high’ versions of languages isn’t very useful for young students who prefer vernacular, colloquial ways of speaking.
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Bernie Millar, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
There is little value in translating academic texts into “high” or “deep” versions of African languages. Most students read and speak their mother tongues in a far more colloquial fashion.