Mother tongues in a twist

For Caitlin Came choosing to study isiZulu proved to be the best decision of her school years. Came (18), now a first-year BA student at the University of Cape Town, ignored advice to switch to the entrenched and therefore ‘easier” second-language option Afrikaans, which, by common consent, is the safer route to an overall better matric result for non-isiZulu speakers.

Through diligence, and with the help of a committed teacher at her school, Came passed isiZulu with a distinction in her finals.

Came was one of 8 391 second-language learners who sat the isiZulu exam last year, 963 more than in the previous year.

Despite this encouraging increase in the number of second-language learners taking isiZulu, obstacles still stand in the way of national efforts to turn the department of education’s vision of a multilingual South Africa into a classroom reality.

Problems include a shortage of suitably skilled teachers, imperfect methodologies and, in some cases, reluctance on the part of schools to promote African second-language options that may cause learners to do badly and lower the schools’ success rating — measured, often obsessively, by matric results.

Introduced as part of Curriculum 2005 in 1997 and revised in 2006, the education department’s schools language policy sets out to encourage the promotion of African languages by empowering learners to choose the language in which they want to be taught.

It also promotes, at the very minimum, bilingualism in schools by making two languages compulsory for the attainment of the Further Education and Training (FET) certificate, which has replaced the matric certificate. The policy also encourages learners, especially in the foundation phase, to be taught in their mother tongue.

Though implementation of the department’s bold thinking about a coherent, practical policy of multi-lingualism is plagued by many factors — from a lack of resolve to a lack of resources — pockets of excellence do exist.

Came passed isiZulu with flying colours at St Mary’s College, an elite private school in Johannesburg.

Not restrained by the lack of resources that hinder most South African schools, St Mary’s has shown a remarkable commitment to making the language policy of ‘two-way immersion” — or bilingualism — work.

Under principal Meg Fargher, the school has created a department of African languages responsible for teaching isiZulu and Sesotho.

The department’s head, Phumzile Sithebe, who has been teaching isiZulu since 1994, was singled out by Came as a major contributor to her success.

‘She was incredible,” says Came. ‘Always ready to help us and give us extra lessons in her own time.”

St Mary’s employs two isiZulu teachers, enabling small, intimate classes of about 10 learners.

Sithebe teaches the non-mother tongue speakers using a grammar-translation method that allows her to give lessons mostly in English. Her colleague is responsible for teaching mother-tongue speakers and others who may not speak isiZulu at home, but who display a strong predisposition towards the language. Teaching of this group takes place almost exclusively in isiZulu.

Fargher says St Mary’s is guided by ‘what’s best for the students’ [results], not what’s best for the school”.

In another part of Johannesburg Alex Irwin, a Grade 12 learner at a former model-C school in Parktown, is having a harder time learning isiZulu. Irwin (18) says she’s constantly ‘terrified” by the prospect of failing the language –  and with it her final FET certificate.

Unlike Came, Irwin has had to find a private tutor after school hours to help her catch-up.

Though Irwin has studied isiZulu since grade four, she has struggled at high school and finds the environment ‘not supportive enough” in terms of offering extra teaching to those with no other background in the language.

As the recent legal battle between the chief executive of the Pan South African Languages Board, Rosemary Ntombehle Nkosi, and Durban High School demonstrates, balancing implementation of policy and integration of learners can prove tricky.

Nkosi recently made headlines when she accused the school of not taking isiZulu seriously because it taught her son isiZulu — his mother tongue — as a third additional language.

Arguing that her son’s rights had been infringed, Nkosi said he’d been forced by available options to take Afrikaans as a second language instead.

In its defence Durban High School said practical considerations relating to teaching the language had resulted in classes being split along racial lines. This situation has been described by the school’s headmaster, Dave Magner, as going against the spirit of integration.

Bhukulani High School in Soweto has been rated one of the best schools in Gauteng. Thanks to its learner population of readymade multilinguists — because of exposure to a variety of languages in a typical township environment — the school does not experience the same problems.

If anything, says principal Dr Mduduzi Mathe, his learners are disadvantaged when it comes to English. Though it remains the medium of instruction at Bhukulani, Mathe says dryly it often ends up as being his learners’ ‘third language after tsotsi taal”.

The school teaches both isiZulu and isiXhosa as home languages.

However, Mathe believes that better resourced schools are more likely to overcome teaching problems in general.

And some former model-C schools, he says, show little commitment to ensuring the success of African languages and don’t — or can’t — employ suitably skilled teachers.

This can result in a history of a maths teacher being taken on to teach an African language simply because it’s his or her mother tongue.

One educator who has been involved in teaching isiZulu since the 1970s, who asked to remain anonymous, stops short of saying that only mother-tongue-speaking teachers should teach the language. ‘I don’t care who teaches the language as long as they are trained.”

But the absence of developed teaching techniques for second languages remains, according to all educationists interviewed, the most pressing problem of all.

Says the head of the African languages department at the University of Johannesburg, Professor Manie Groenewald: ‘As in other spheres of education the methodology for teaching second and third languages is not state of the art in South Africa.”

The methodology issue is exacerbated by the fact that there are not enough African teachers entering the teacher pool who are interested in teaching African languages.

According to the head of the Wits University School of Education, Mary Metcalfe, in 2006 just 50 new teachers out of 6 000 showed an interest in teaching an African language in the critical foundation phase. As the new teacher intake is about the same each year, this would equate to less than 1% a year.

But the tide could be turning.

Last year the national education department introduced the Funza Lushaka Bursary scheme to attract young people to consider a career in teaching African languages.

So far 330 students at South African universities have been awarded this bursary to study to become African language teachers. These are spread among eight African languages, with about 103 teachers dedicated to isiZulu. IsiXhosa netted the highest number of student teachers with 116.

Breaking out of what Came calls ‘comfort zones” puts educators and learners alike on a steep learning curve. For Came it’s been worth the slog.

‘Facing new experiences is an integral part in a child’s transformation into a mature, open-minded adult. Learning isiZulu as a white teenager in South Africa provided me with the opportunity to do this and I hope to continue with IsiZulu in the future.”