Stellenbosch report opens up to English
STELLENBOSCH University’s language task team has recommended that Afrikaans and English should have equal status as mediums of teaching at the institution.
Student pressure group Open Stellenbosch has been agitating for the language policy to be tweaked, arguing that it is biased towards Afrikaans, thereby disadvantaging black students.
Earlier this year, a language task team was established to make specific recommendations on language policy as well as the implementation of a language plan.
Yesterday, the task team released its report to the student representative council (SRC).
The university said options pertaining to the acceleration of parallel-medium teaching would be investigated urgently, and priority given to the conversion of modules with high enrolments to parallel-medium teaching next year. The student feedback process on the language plan would be revised to ensure a rapid response.
The university has said it wants to provide 75% of its modules in English and Afrikaans in the coming years. Postgraduate classes are already in English.
The current language policy, which critics say is vague, states that “Afrikaans and English are applied in various usage configurations”, while “parallel-medium teaching and real-time educational interpretation are used as preferred options where practically feasible and affordable”.
Some black students and Open Stellenbosch have argued that this policy essentially neglects those who cannot understand Afrikaans since the interpretation service is often of poor quality and things are easily lost in translation.
Prof Arnold Schoonwinkel, vice-rector for learning and teaching, said yesterday longer-term strategies should be formulated in partnership with faculties to increase the multilingual offering above 75% in English and above 75% in Afrikaans much earlier than 2020. “It is simply not possible to change to fully fledged parallel-medium teaching in the remaining months of this year to allow for all classes to be taught in English and Afrikaans from January 2016. Part of the process is a consideration of the physical infrastructure requirements and timetable changes.”
Comment from the SRC and Open Stellenbosch was not available last night.