English’s dominance seen as marginalising other languages – expert

Why would a young man from Aliwal North move more than 1 000km away from home to study in Pretoria?

Because there he can study for a degree in his home language, AfrikaansGerhard Labuschagne is a young, coloured man who has left his family behind in the Eastern Cape to follow his dream of becoming a journalist by studying journalism in Tshwane.

“My household is Afrikaans, my whole family is Afrikaans, I went to an Afrikaans school,” Labuschagne said. “Basically everything I know, I learned in Afrikaans.”

Labuschagne said he decided on a communications and journalism degree because he likes to talk.

“I also like stories.” He hasn’t decided exactly where he wants to work when he has earned his degree.

“I want to be a journalist so I can tell the story behind the story; the truth.”

Professor Hannes Rautenbach, a lecturer in natural science at Akademia Afrikaans University in Centurion, said students learn better and faster in a language they fully understand.

“Studies have reported that when students take advantage of their multilingualism they also enjoy higher socioeconomic status, including higher earnings,” he said.

Rautenbach said complex subjects such as maths and science were a language on their own and were easier to understand in your mother tongue.

Dr Paul Steyn, coordinator of the accreditation, said Akademia is open to everyone.

Steyn said about three years ago, he arrived early at one of the other campuses to find a young black man waiting at the gate.

He asked if he would be allowed to study there and Steyn told him he might be one of the minority black students studying at the campus.

“No problem,” he replied. “The student said he didn’t want to go to Tukkies at the time because he does not understand English properly.”

Steyn said the student not only completed his degree but also served on the student council. This year, 1 850 students will start their first year at Akademia, with online students tuning into from as far as Amsterdam, New Zealand and Dubai.

Steyn said 90% of university students are working and studying part-time and are between the ages of 28 and 32.

Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education, tweeted on 11 March about the request by the academic planning committee of the University of Stellenbosch Senate for all new courses at the university to be presented in English.

He wrote: “The day I believe the DA [Democratic Alliance] is serious about the mother tongue (Afrikaans) at Stellenbosch is the day I see them agitating for the teaching of mother tongue (isiXhosa) in the schools and universities of the Western Cape.

“Until then, their political visits to SU [Stellenbosch University] count as rank opportunism.”

Education expert professor Mary Metcalfe, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg, said learning in one’s first language is critical.

“But there are considerations such as promoting the embracing of diversity, social cohesion,” Metcalfe said.

She said the challenge was also language and power relations and the sense that the dominance of English in universities inevitably led to the marginalisation of other languages.

“We have to hold the goals of meaningful promotion of the use of all languages of academic purposes with the need to live in spaces that are inclusive and build cohesion.

“These must be seen as complementary and not competing,” she said.

marizkac@citizen.co.za

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