Challenge to teaching language

THE teaching of English as a subject has proved to be a challenge in many South African schools.

South African classrooms are faced with diverse class, gender, mother tongue language groups, etc.

Babalwa Williams, a language teacher at Khwezi Lomso Comprehensive School, researched the notion of “translanguaging” and puts forward some meaningful ideas.

Teachers often tend to view Efal (English first additional language) pupils as lacking English proficiency, disregarding the fact that pupils learn another language with intellectual abilities and content knowledge from their first language.

A strong first language foundation is invaluable in transferring skills learnt in the mother tongue to another.

The promotion of inclusivity in the language classroom would have to take the pupils’ mother tongue into consideration to motivate diverse pupils to succeed.

Teachers encounter the difficulties arising from pupils’ inadequate acquisition of the first additional vocabulary, because of the early transition from mother tongue education to “foreign” language education (English).

Research has demonstrated that code-switching [the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation] is a useful resource.

I have also found it highly beneficial in language teaching. As a recently qualified teacher, I found it useful when teaching English first additional language to a class of predominantly Xhosa-speaking pupils.

It enhances additive bilingual education: they are learning another language while they use the basis gained from the first language.

Given our political history, the link between language and group or individual identity cannot be overemphasised.

Teachers have also asserted code-switching assists in ensuring that all pupils understand or are on par with everything being taught, particularly in subjects where they often grapple with difficult jargon or concepts.

Code-switching also helps with discipline and ensuring pupils stay focused. Code-switching and pupil interaction in relevant activities (usually in the mother tongue) in group discussion can assist in the learning of the foreign language.

Many pupils in the South African classroom are not monolinguals, and various factors have led to their becoming bi- and multilingual.

Thus this bilingualism or multilingualism assists in the optimisation and understanding of their communication. An inclusive language classroom should be able to connect to the realities of the pupil’s life by allowing or giving space to translanguaging.

Researchers have noted that translanguaging differs from traditional code-switching because it assists in building bilingualism – pupils in class often make sense of the learning material, including other languages, and their different worlds by “translanguaging” behind the backs of the teachers.

It enables them to communicate creatively and meaningfully.

Translanguaging has in fact always been there: in pre-colonial communities and in rural contexts.

Translanguaging should be identified as a practice that multilinguals engage in to express and communicate and find a voice for some dominated languages.

Translanguaging in the classroom should be seen as the “flexible use of linguistic resources to make meaning of [life and] complex worlds”, according to Williams.

Translanguaging is not codeswitching, but a resource at the disposal of bilinguals. Thus translanguaging proves to be a great tool in the language classroom for many reasons:

ý It permits the pupil and teacher to acknowledge and use the full range of linguistic practice of bilinguals, thus improving learning and teaching;

ý When more than one language is used in collaboration or alongside, it gives an opportunity to notice the similarities or different language features. This is a vital aspect of developing language capabilities or aptitudes;

ý Translanguaging enhances the notion of “personal relevance” for the pupil, within the language classroom; ý Language is “action and practice”; ý Translanguaging occurs naturally and spontaneously. Many pupils have developed the practice from home and their surrounding environments.

Joe Slingers, Uitenhage