EC hosts isiXhosa revival pilot project
15 schools in Zwelitsha and King benefit from mother tongue project
The importance of English mastery has been hammered into pupils from a young age, but now a new programme seeks to reignite a love of their mother tongue in isiXhosa pupils.
The mother tongue literacy project, called Chumani Nande KwisiXhosa, is being piloted in 15 primary schools in Zwelitsha and King William’s Town. These pupils will be taught how to read and comprehend their mother tongue.
The literacy pilot project is being implemented in collaboration with the University of Fort Hare’s Nelson Mandela Institute and the Eastern Cape department of education.
Funded by the KS Birch Bequest provincial school’s trust, it was launched for teachers and principals in Zwelitsha schools at the department’s Schornville offices. The project will focus on pupils in Grades 4 to 6 and isiXhosa teachers.
Zoliswa Matshingana, education planner for indigenous languages in the province, lauded the project as a “first of its kind for isiXhosa in the province in the intermediate phase”.
“We are very keen on this project because there have been many interventions that focus on English in schools but there’s never been any intervention towards isiXhosa.
“This is a dream come true for me,” Matshingana said.
She said the project would invest cutting-edge material for isiXhosa literacy that would help teachers and pupils excel in the mother tongue from a young age.
Dr Brian Ramadiro, of the Nelson Mandela Institute, said their role would be to upskill teachers of the 15 schools to assist them in rolling out the isiXhosa curriculum in their classes. The training would begin later this month, he said.
After the training and mentorship, facilitators from the institute would go back to the classes with the teachers to oversee isiXhosa lessons and monitor how they translate what they have learnt to the pupils. He said a baseline study conducted by the institute found that attitudes towards isiXhosa were skewed among both teachers and pupils in schools.
“South African children have difficulty understanding texts written in their own languages, and isiXhosa statistics are one of the worst. If they do grasp the basic reading skill, their vocabulary is still one or two grades below where they [should be].”
He said teachers and pupils would be evaluated at the end of the year to measure the success of the project. The learning material would include isiXhosa poetry, books, newspapers and magazine clippings.
“From this experience we will be able to identify what lessons can be implemented across the province.”
Birch Bequest trustee Nosipho Skenjana said: “African languages have been thought of as inferior for so long while English has been the benchmark of intelligence. We now need to unravel this because if teachers aren’t passionate about isiXhosa, the pupils will feel the same way.”
She wants the project to restore the dignity of African languages and transform mindsets so that people fall back in love with indigenous languages.
Executive manager for the Eastern Cape Education Development Trust, Anne-Lise Bollaert-Davies, said the project put the Eastern Cape at the “cutting edge of mother tongue literacy”.
This puts the Eastern Cape at the cutting edge of mother tongue literacy