ARE STUDENTS EXAMINED ON LANGUAGE THEY USE?

As schools conduct a post- mortem on the 2020 examination results, they should also consider whether examinations are based on the lived experiences of learners. On a popular American radio talk show called The Breakfast Club, R& B singer Keith Sweat supplants a lot of narrative details when telling the story of how he was not credited for a hit song he wrote with the word “boom.” Here at home, a UDC MP has used that same word to supplant very important details in telling a story of how the Vice President tried to recruit him to the BDP. On account of this new storytelling convention, students shouldn’t be penalised when they tell the story of Mfecane in the following way: “There was this Zulu guy called Shaka and so one day boom! war boom! domino effect boom! displacements boom! Mzilikazi! boom! ...”