Mother Tongue > Academic Language of Instruction

"People think best in the language they understand best."

A topic for our final blog post, and one that has provided much insight (for me) into the current topic on campus of academic languages, this week in General Linguistics we found ourselves discussing

"Children should be taught in their mother tongues as long as possible."

With eye-opening information on the development of CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) and BICS (Basic Interpersonal communication skills), for the first time I gained a deeper insight into the struggle that all non-English as a first language speakers experience when they begin their academic journey.

For the hurriedness of this post, I'm going to keep it a little more subjective than what may be appropriate in argumentative circumstances. Heads-up to all yall critiquing critters out there- this is a blog, and I'm a linguist, this means I reject all 'dem existentialist, prescriptive views- and as a result, I may write as I wish.
#LinguisticLiberty

I want you to imagine that you are seven years old again. Yes you, reading this blog, you are now incredibly pre-teen, you find yourself avoiding eye contact with any pair that may require you to tilt your chin higher than normal, in your adolescence you are shy, little, curious, enjoy playing with mud and have hopefully by now, at some point, ingested a fair amount of play dough. If not- you may need to re-evaluate the authenticity of your childhood.

It's Grade 1. Your wax crayons (oh, excuse me rich kid, are those turn-ups?) are sitting comfortably in your little denim chair-bag that houses the sum total of the three books in which you split three subjects: English Literacy, Numeracy and some variant third. On your table lays the remnants of some lunch alongside a white A4 paper with th drawing of a jovial looking spider on it, each of his eight legs connecting some numbers on the left to some numbers on the right.

The teacher begins her lesson, it's on addition. Ready?


"viðbót og frádráttur, 2 munurinn 1..."

Easy stuff right? 'Cummon- you recognize those numbers- you've got this!

"bæta 4... " 

Continues the overtly sweet and encouraging voice of your first Primary School teacher.

What's the problem folks? Never learnt how to do maths in Icelandic? 

Not to worry! You'll easily find friends who share this struggle among the 81% of black students in your age bracket who failed their National Maths Benchmark test for preliminary phase because they too didn't have the necessary foundation in the language of academic instruction to cognitively process the conceptual content of subjects such as Mathematics and Science. 

Although rudimentary, this model remains effective in illustrating the reality of what the majority of South African youth face today. As Dr. Mongie so aptly said "How are you supposed to learn new content in a language that you don't even understand yet?".

Words that struck home as I sat soon thereafter in an Afrikaans lecture myself, not battling to keep up with the work being covered given my advantageous knowledge of the language in Academic context- yet I could not help but notice the blank faces of many friends who don't share this advantage. 

In a country with eleven official languages- one can only imagine the administrative chaos that would accompany a system which catered for all the colors and cultures of our Nation. But can we truly afford to continue neglecting the vast majority of youth who simply are not equipped to compete at the same pace with their English Home Language peers who sit in the very same class as they do?

This, dear readers, is an element of privilege that all too many of us never appreciate in our lives. To be taught in ones mother tongue from the very beginning of our academic journey is to be placed at the finish line of a race our peers have not even arrived at yet. Can we afford to continue like this?
Comrades- the saddening statistics that show us a sad average of 30% of non-English as a first language speakers qualifying for University after Matric tell us that no. We cannot.

African languages need to be embraced within the South African Education system. They deserve recognition and admiration as the tools of empowerment that they truly are. "We are equating intelligence with English proficiency". But furthermore- we are contributing to the slow process of the linguistic genocide that many African languages face in competing against English as a lingua-franca of the world as well as our Nation.

Through the cultivation of these languages as fundamentals to our society, we will surely foster a new respect for, a new hope, and most importantly for this generation and for those to come- a new and imperative cultural integration among our youth of today, tomorrow, and through their hope, we have the power to touch and heal the wounds of the past.