OPINION :SA universities play key role in making more students multilingual
South Africa is a multilingual, multicultural space. As is the case for many other countries in Africa, it has a number of official languages – 11.
But the good news is that universities are becoming increasingly aware that they have an important role to play in ensuring that students do more than just graduate – they also need to be linguistically competent to work in sectors of society where the majority of people who access services can’t speak English.
These courses have been introduced at a number of universities in South Africa. This hasn’t been a universally accepted move. Some academics have argued that this approach “takes students off course” and distracts them from the key purpose of their degrees. For instance, at Rhodes University IsiXhosa for Journalism is compulsory. It is part of the journalism course and must be passed at the relevant level: mother tongue, if a student’s home language is isiXhosa, and second language level if not. At the same institution, isiXhosa for Pharmacy is an elective and is integrated into the fourth year Pharmacy course. On average about 300 students a year complete these vocation specific language courses.
And the University of KwaZulu-Natal has taken a bold approach: students must learn isiZulu to graduate, no matter their degree.
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