Browsing by Subject "Language"
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- ItemOpen AccessA Qualitative study of language barriers between South African health care providers and cross-border migrants(BioMed Central, 2017-01-31) Hunter-Adams, Jo; Rother, Hanna-AndreaBackground: Communication with health care providers represents an essential part of access to health care for the over 230 million cross-border migrants around the world. In this article, we explore the complexity of health communication from the perspective of cross-border migrants seeking antenatal care in Cape Town, South Africa in order to highlight the importance of high quality medical interpretation. Methods: As part of a broader study of migrant maternal and infant nutrition, we conducted a secondary data analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews (N = 23) with Congolese (n = 7), Somali (n = 8) and Zimbabwean (n = 8) women living in Cape Town, as well as nine focus group discussions (including men: n = 3 and women: n = 6) were conducted with migrant Somalis, Congolese, and Zimbabweans (N = 48). We first used content analysis to gather all data related to language and communication. We then analysed this data thematically. Results: Zimbabwean participants described how the inability to speak the local South African language (IsiXhosa) gave rise to labelling and stereotyping by healthcare staff. Congolese and Somali participants described medical procedures, including tubal ligation, which were performed without consent. Partners often tried to play the role of interpreter, which resulted in loss of income and non-professional medical interpretation. Participants’ highlighted fears over unwanted procedures or being unable to access care. Challenges of communication without a common language (and without professional medical interpretation), rather than outright denial of care by healthcare professionals, mediated these encounters. Conclusion: Although there are several factors impeding cross-border migrants’ access to health care, effective communication is a prerequisite for quality care. Free-to-patient professional medical interpretation would not only benefit migrant populations but would benefit the broader community where language and health literacy are barriers to accessing health care. Novel approaches to language access may include technology-enabled professional interpretation.
- ItemOpen AccessA Qualitative study of language barriers between South African health care providers and cross-border migrants(2017) Hunter-Adams, Jo; Rother, Hanna-AndreaAbstract Background Communication with health care providers represents an essential part of access to health care for the over 230 million cross-border migrants around the world. In this article, we explore the complexity of health communication from the perspective of cross-border migrants seeking antenatal care in Cape Town, South Africa in order to highlight the importance of high quality medical interpretation. Methods As part of a broader study of migrant maternal and infant nutrition, we conducted a secondary data analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews (N = 23) with Congolese (n = 7), Somali (n = 8) and Zimbabwean (n = 8) women living in Cape Town, as well as nine focus group discussions (including men: n = 3 and women: n = 6) were conducted with migrant Somalis, Congolese, and Zimbabweans (N = 48). We first used content analysis to gather all data related to language and communication. We then analysed this data thematically. Results Zimbabwean participants described how the inability to speak the local South African language (IsiXhosa) gave rise to labelling and stereotyping by healthcare staff. Congolese and Somali participants described medical procedures, including tubal ligation, which were performed without consent. Partners often tried to play the role of interpreter, which resulted in loss of income and non-professional medical interpretation. Participants’ highlighted fears over unwanted procedures or being unable to access care. Challenges of communication without a common language (and without professional medical interpretation), rather than outright denial of care by healthcare professionals, mediated these encounters. Conclusion Although there are several factors impeding cross-border migrants’ access to health care, effective communication is a prerequisite for quality care. Free-to-patient professional medical interpretation would not only benefit migrant populations but would benefit the broader community where language and health literacy are barriers to accessing health care. Novel approaches to language access may include technology-enabled professional interpretation.
- ItemOpen AccessCaregivers' experiences of pathways to care for seriously ill children in Cape Town, South Africa: A qualitative investigation(Public Library of Science, 2016) Jones, Caroline H D; Ward, Alison; Hodkinson, Peter W; Reid, Stephen J; Wallis, Lee A; Harrison, Sian; Argent, Andrew CPurpose Understanding caregivers' experiences of care can identify barriers to timely and good quality care, and support the improvement of services. We aimed to explore caregivers' experiences and perceptions of pathways to care, from first access through various levels of health service, for seriously ill and injured children in Cape Town, South Africa, in order to identify areas for improvement. METHODS: Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with primary caregivers of children who were admitted to paediatric intensive care or died in the health system prior to intensive care admission. Interviews explored caregivers' experiences from when their child first became ill, through each level of health care to paediatric intensive care or death. A maximum variation sample of transcripts was purposively sampled from a larger cohort study based on demographic characteristics, child diagnosis, and outcome at 30 days; and analysed using the method of constant comparison. RESULTS: Of the 282 caregivers who were interviewed in the larger cohort study, 45 interviews were included in this qualitative analysis. Some caregivers employed 'tactics' to gain quicker access to care, including bypassing lower levels of care, and negotiating or demanding to see a healthcare professional ahead of other patients. It was sometimes unclear how to access emergency care within facilities; and non-medical personnel informally judged illness severity and helped or hindered quicker access. Caregivers commonly misconceived ambulances to be slow to arrive, and were concerned when ambulance transfers were seemingly not prioritised by illness severity. Communication was often good, but some caregivers experienced language difficulties and/or criticism. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions to improve child health care could be based on: reorganising the reception of seriously ill children and making the emergency route within healthcare facilities clear; promoting caregivers' use of ambulances and prioritising transfers according to illness severity; addressing language barriers, and emphasising the importance of effective communication to healthcare providers.
- ItemOpen AccessDe-creating Language Borders at the University of Cape Town: “The Fall of English” and the Rise of African Languages in Education(2021) Botes, Inge-Ame; Nyamnjoh, FrancisThe salience of English as the main language of instruction at tertiary institutions across South Africa has not been without critique. At the University of Cape Town, henceforth UCT, conversations surrounding language and academic success have become bolstered by the rhetoric of decolonisation, necessitating a review of policy and practice. This in turn has opened up research opportunities pertaining to student and staff experiences of language at the institution. This thesis is a response to the urgent need for ethnographic focus on the language situation at UCT and higher education institutions countrywide, where increasingly light falls on the language question within quests for decolonisation and social justice. Focusing the language question within frameworks of decoloniality, glocalisation, translanguaging and the development of African languages in education, this thesis distills ethnographic data to argue that language borders need to be reevaluated in a quest for conviviality informed by the universality of incompleteness, where fluidity, interconnection, and interdependence are prioritised over the current dominance of English. Grounded in rich ethnographic evidence in the form of student interviews and reflections, meeting at the intersection of social and linguistic anthropology, this thesis grapples with the critical questions: “What is language at UCT? And what does language do?”
- ItemOpen AccessThe Learning for Living Project 2000-2004: A book-based approach to the learning of language in South African primary schools(2008) Schollar, EricThe Learning for Living Project was implemented over five years in 957 primary schools in all nine provinces of South Africa. The intervention embodied a bookbased approach to the learning of English as a second language and was based upon a modified book flood model utilizing the supply of materials supported by in-service training as well as extensive classroom monitoring. A total of 13 164 teachers were supplied with a total of 4 002 103 individual books of different types – a mean of 304 per teacher. In addition, each teacher received a mean of 9.6 INSET courses and 6.9 monitoring visits. The project cost R153 million for a total of 875 000 learners yielding a per capita cost of R175 per learner over the whole five year project, including project staff salaries and administration. The project was externally evaluated through the use of a quasi experimental design that longitudinally tracked true cohorts of randomly selected learners in project and control groups drawn from a sample of 90 schools. The resulting data has a precision of just over 1% at a confidence level of 95% - mean scores of the project and control groups were virtually equivalent at baseline (-0.5% difference in relation to the project mean). All of the components of the sample measured significant impacts in the project group over the controls in literacy – Cohort One +6.9%, Cohort Two +3.4%, Grade Five +7.6% and Grade Seven +7.7%. There is a 100% certainty that these impacts were achieved as a result of the book- based approach to the learning of English as a second language applied by the Learning for Living Project. That similar impacts in mathematics were not obtained suggests that poor inputs and outcomes in mathematics exist independently of the language in which it is learned.
- ItemOpen AccessRevised timeline and distribution of the earliest diverged human maternal lineages in southern Africa(Public Library of Science, 2015) Chan, Eva K F; Hardie, Rae-Anne; Petersen, Desiree C; Beeson, Karen; Bornman, Riana M S; Smith, Andrew B; Hayes, Vanessa MThe oldest extant human maternal lineages include mitochondrial haplogroups L0d and L0k found in the southern African click-speaking forager peoples broadly classified as Khoesan. Profiling these early mitochondrial lineages allows for better understanding of modern human evolution. In this study, we profile 77 new early-diverged complete mitochondrial genomes and sub-classify another 105 L0d/L0k individuals from southern Africa. We use this data to refine basal phylogenetic divergence, coalescence times and Khoesan prehistory. Our results confirm L0d as the earliest diverged lineage (∼172 kya, 95%CI: 149-199 kya), followed by L0k (∼159 kya, 95%CI: 136-183 kya) and a new lineage we name L0g (∼94 kya, 95%CI: 72-116 kya). We identify two new L0d1 subclades we name L0d1d and L0d1c4/L0d1e, and estimate L0d2 and L0d1 divergence at ∼93 kya (95%CI:76-112 kya). We concur the earliest emerging L0d1’2 sublineage L0d1b (∼49 kya, 95%CI:37-58 kya) is widely distributed across southern Africa. Concomitantly, we find the most recent sublineage L0d2a (∼17 kya, 95%CI:10-27 kya) to be equally common. While we agree that lineages L0d1c and L0k1a are restricted to contemporary inland Khoesan populations, our observed predominance of L0d2a and L0d1a in non-Khoesan populations suggests a once independent coastal Khoesan prehistory. The distribution of early-diverged human maternal lineages within contemporary southern Africans suggests a rich history of human existence prior to any archaeological evidence of migration into the region. For the first time, we provide a genetic-based evidence for significant modern human evolution in southern Africa at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum at between ∼21-17 kya, coinciding with the emergence of major lineages L0d1a, L0d2b, L0d2d and L0d2a.
- ItemOpen AccessTowards Validation of South African Communicative Development Inventories: An object naming/identification task for South African English and Afrikaans(2022) Husselmann, Nicole; Pascoe, Michelle; Southwood, FrenetteBackground: South Africa is a country rich in diversity, with language constituting a large proportion of this diversity as the country has eleven official languages with Afrikaans, isiXhosa and South African English (SAE) being the provincial languages of the Western Cape. Research on language acquisition in South Africa is limited, but vital for the early identification, assessment and management of children who are not developing language in a typical way. A recent project in South Africa has led to the development of Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs) in several of the country's official languages. MB-CDIs are parent-report questionnaires about young children's language acquisition. It is challenging to validate these MB-CDIs in the local context as there are few other language assessments available for comparative purposes. Aims and Objectives: This project aimed to develop a protocol for language assessments that can be used as part of the validation process for the MB-CDIs in South African languages. The objectives were (1) to devise a protocol for an object naming and object identification task for use with six South African languages (Afrikaans, isiXhosa, SAE, Sesotho, Setswana, and Xitsonga); (2) to describe the expressive and receptive language of children acquiring SAE based on assessment with two different tools/approaches (the object naming/identification task and parent-report MB-CDI); and (3) to describe the expressive and receptive language of children acquiring Afrikaans based on assessment with two different tools/approaches (the object naming/identification task and parent-report MB-CDI). Methodology: This study used a mixed-methods, descriptive-linguistic approach. The first objective relied on literature only and no participants were needed. I devised a protocol for a novel object naming/identification task1 which could be used to validate the MB-CDIs in six languages (Afrikaans, isiXhosa, SAE, Sesotho, Setswana, and Xitsonga). For objectives 2 and 3, focusing solely on SAE and Afrikaans, I used the protocol to devise an object naming/identification task to be used with each language, respectively. Participants (toddlercaregiver dyads) were recruited and a pilot study undertaken in which the object naming/identification task was administered to each child participant. I collected parental report data by either administering the MB-CDI in SAE and Afrikaans manually to the adult participants (parents/guardians of the children), or by providing them with a link to the online version of the MB-CDI which they were able to complete in their own time. A total of 35 dyads were included in this study: 17 child and 17 adult participants for SAE and 18 child and 18 adult participants for Afrikaans. Results: SAE: The descriptive statistics suggested variability in the overall scores on both the object naming/identification task and the MB-CDI. Correlations between the 25 items in the object naming/identification task and the same 25 items in the MB-CDI indicated a significant correlation between the two assessments overall (r=0.928; p<0.05) and a significant correlation was indicated for toddlers only (r=0.935; p<0.05) and a significant correlation was indicated for toddlers only (r=0.901; p< 0.01). Correlations between the object naming/identification task and the entire MB-CDI indicated a significant correlation (r=0.901; p< 0.01) for overall vocabulary scores. Internal reliability scores for only the 25 items included in the object naming/identification task and the 25 items in the MB-CDI also indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains (α=0.911). For the gesture domain, a reasonable but lower internal consistency (α=0.673) was found. Internal reliability scores overall indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains (α=0.947). In contrast, the internal consistency indicated for the gesture domain was not satisfactory (α=0.293). Afrikaans: The descriptive statistics indicated variability among scores obtained on the MB-CDI and the object naming/identification task. Correlations between the 25 items included in the object naming/identification task and only the same 25 items included in the MB-CDI, indicated a strong correlation (r=0.906; p< 0.01). No correlation was found for infants only (r=0.692; p< 0.05) and a significant correlation was indicated for toddlers only (r=0.901; p< 0.01). Correlations between the object naming/identification task and the entire MB-CDI indicated a strong correlation for overall vocabulary scores (r=0.909; p< 0.01). Internal reliability scores on only the 25 items included in both assessments indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains (α=0.960). Internal reliability scores between the object naming/identification task and the entire MB-CDI indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains (α=0.950). Similarly, a strong internal consistency was found for the gesture domain (α=0.914). Conclusion: The findings indicate that when correlating the responses to the 25 items included in the object naming/identification task and the MB-CDI only, as well as from the entire vocabulary and gesture sections of the MB-CDI, there is high concurrent validity between the two assessments overall for both SAE and Afrikaans. Focusing on toddlers and infants more specifically, although high concurrent validity was found overall, the findings for both SAE and Afrikaans suggest that there is high concurrent validity for both assessments for toddlers, but no correlation between the assessments for infants. High internal consistency indicated reliability for both assessments for SAE and Afrikaans. The object naming/identification task, which was developed and piloted in this study, has the potential to be used as a measure to validate full MB-CDIs in SAE and Afrikaans. Furthermore, it has the potential to be used as a valid and reliable screening tool in its own right, although further refinement is needed for the infant component of the task. The protocol developed in the first objective of this study can now be applied to other local languages, ultimately contributing to the creation of a valid and reliable set of assessments of young children's early language development in South Africa.