Affirming marginal voices : a study of a group of primary school children in an asymmetrical multilingual setting

Abstract

The aim of my teaching intervention, dialogue journal writing, was to counter these deficit perceptions by affirming the marginal home language at school. More importantly, I aimed to give children who do not often get the opportunity to do so, the space to voice themselves in writing. My research, therefore, aimed at investigating the dialogue journal writing process as a means of raising the status of Xhosa at school, as well as to affirm the voices of children in asymmetrical multilingual settings.