INTERVIEW WITH LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONER

I conducted an interview with the language development practitioner as I wanted to gain insights into the NMMU language policy and also to gauge how successful its implementation had been throughout the university. Below are the 3 open ended questions I posed, together with her responses.

4.5.1 The language policy was approved in September 2005: what has been done to implement the language policy and what do you intend doing in the future?

She stated that since the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) is situated in the Eastern Cape and the dominant languages spoken in the Eastern Cape are English,

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Afrikaans and isiXhosa, the university‟s language policy aims to encourage the use of isiXhosa and Afrikaans alongside English, the university‟s current LOLT. The policy seeks to encourage the maintenance of Afrikaans as an alternative LOLT and simultaneously to promote the development of IsiXhosa as a future LOLT. Her role, therefore, was to build capacity for the maintenance of Afrikaans and to develop isiXhosa as a LOLT.

She said that various measures had been put in place to promote multilingualism but she also admitted that a lot still needs to be done. One way of promoting multilingualism was to invite lecturers to attend multilingual workshops. These workshops were held four times a year and all lecturers were encouraged to attend them. She admitted, however, that these workshops were not well attended. She said she intended to seek the cooperation of lecturers at the quarterly Faculty Board meetings . One of the most challenging issues that she had to deal with during these workshops was to change the negative attitudes of lecturers towards using isiXhosa and Afrikaans as LOLTs alongside English. To this end she has already informed lecturers of the university‟s language policy and suggested various multilingual strategies they could use in their classes. For example, lecturers have been encouraged to use functional multilingualism in their lectures. This means that if lecturers and students have a common language - for example, Afrikaans or isiXhosa - they can seek permission from faculty board members to use the common language in their classes. Second language students may also be granted permission to use isiXhosa/ English, or Afrikaans/ English bilingual dictionaries when they write exams or tests. Workbook assignments, tests and exams can also be translated into Afrikaans or isiXhosa.

The Language Practitioner reported that she had also reached out to the isiXhosa community at her church because they included parents of students at the university: she had informed them of the importance of their children being academically proficient in their mother tongue. In addition, she had also explained the reality of the current language situation for their children and addressed the myth that English will bring economic empowerment. She said that the reactions from parents were normally very positive and it seemed as if they were agreeing with the notion of promoting mother

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tongue education. However, she was not in a position to give assurances that they were in fact taking action. Hence, she would welcome more research into issues involving the role of multilingualism.

In order to assist students academically, she had also developed multilingual glossaries for courses and modules in Computer Sciences, Applied Accounting, Law of Succession, etc. These glossaries had been designed to assist isiXhosa and Afrikaans speaking students who were experiencing difficulties with English terminology in their courses. She added that she had recently received positive feedback from one of the Applied Accountancy lecturers, Ms Tracy Beck, who had reported that her students found the multilingual glossaries to be very helpful. Modules with a high failure rate were the ones which required these multilingual glossaries. After she had identified such modules, she would inform the Head of Department and the lecturer concerned of her intention to design a glossary. Thus far, she had received positive feedback from both the heads of departments and from lecturers.

University librarians had also requested recommendations for isiXhosa novels which they would like to purchase and make available to students. The reason for this request was that they realised they had large numbers of Afrikaans and English books available in the library but very few isiXhosa books.

The Unit for Continuing Education had also been offering an isiXhosa conversational short learning programme to lecturers. This course was designed to promote the culture of multilingualism at the university.

One of her long-term objectives was to pursue the integration of multilingualism into the curriculum for certain modules. In this way students could learn about the importance of mother tongue education, and be made aware of multilingual strategies and various other language issues.

4.5.2 Do you think that the university has the capacity to develop and use Afrikaans/ isiXhosa as languages of learning and teaching alongside English?

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She said she believed that the University had the capacity to develop and use Afrikaans/isiXhosa alongside English: however implementation would only be successful if the university was willing and able to provide the necessary human and financial resources for the policy to be carried out. For example, these resources would be required for translation of multilingual glossaries and of examination and test papers. In addition, funding was needed for the employment of translators and for further research into the role of multilingualism in tertiary education. Her long term objective, which forms part of the university‟s 2020 vision, was for the university to employ a language specialist in each faculty who could assist lecturers to implement multilingualism via appropriate strategies.

4.5.3 Are there any constraints/benefits to implementing the language policy?

As mentioned above, the major constraints would be the negative attitudes of lecturers and students towards using isiXhosa/Afrikaans alongside English. In addition, the negative attitudes of those who had been chosen at Senate level to assist with implementation of the language policy also need to change. Inadequate financial assistance and a shortage of human resources constituted further constraints. Finally there was a lack of awareness of the advantages of mother tongue education and of how lecturers could use multilingual strategies in their classes. She explained that lecturers were fearful of responding in isiXhosa or Afrikaans to a student who asked a question in isiXhosa or Afrikaans. She believed that if lecturers were more aware of how to implement multilingual strategies, they would overcome these fears. As mentioned above, she intended using Faculty Board meetings as platforms to address these issues.

Using the student‟s mother tongue alongside English would help students to comprehend difficult academic texts. She felt that translating modules, exam and tests papers into Afrikaans and isiXhosa assisted students to comprehend and understand concepts and questions. When students were unable to understand a question in English, they had the option of consulting the translated isiXhosa or Afrikaans question

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for more clarity. Finally, she believed that focusing on the importance of mother tongue education instils a sense of pride in students for their own indigenous languages.

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