I AM responding to Sandile Ntuli s letter which appeared in Sunday World last week, September 25, regarding African additional languages as they are called.

Schools and teachers are doing their best to promote these languages, but the attitude from both parents and pupils makes it impossible for the languages to get the recognition they deserve.

Like Afrikaans, parents and grandparents should speak these languages to their children to make it easy for teachers to reinforce it.

Learners should be encouraged to speak the language during lessons and not taught an African language in English.

Qualified teachers should be employed, just as with Afrikaans and English.

More programmes in African languages should be televised and should be part of the curriculum.

These languages should be taken seriously and assessed like maths, English and science.

Parents must choose how and which of the languages are taught at schools.

Debates, competitions and authors must be given platform to sell the languages. The list is endless. Give teachers platforms to talk and address these. I am one of the teachers who tried for more than 10 years to bring teachers together. Lots of suggestions have been turned down. Lindiwe Ndaba By e-mail