Browsing by Subject "Multilingualism"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Building freeways: piloting communication skills in additional languages to health service personnel in Cape Town, South Africa
    (BioMed Central, 2017-06-07) Claassen, Joel; Jama, Zukile; Manga, Nayna; Lewis, Minnie; Hellenberg, Derek
    Background: This study reflects on the development and teaching of communication skills courses in additional national languages to health care staff within two primary health care facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. These courses were aimed at addressing the language disparities that recent research has identified globally between patients and health care staff. Communication skills courses were offered to staff at two Metropolitan District Health Services clinics to strengthen patient access to health care services. This study reflects on the communicative proficiency in the additional languages that were offered to health care staff. Methods: A mixed-method approach was utilised during this case study with quantitative data-gathering through surveys and qualitative analysis of assessment results. The language profiles of the respective communities were assessed through data obtained from the South African National census, while staff language profiles were obtained at the health care centres. Quantitative measuring, by means of a patient survey at the centres, occurred on a randomly chosen day to ascertain the language profile of the patient population. Participating staff performed assessments at different phases of the training courses to determine their skill levels by the end of the course. Results: The performances of the participating staff during the Xhosa and Afrikaans language courses were assessed, and the development of the staff communicative competencies was measured. Health care staff learning the additional languages could develop Basic or Intermediate Xhosa and Afrikaans that enables communication with patients. Conclusions: In multilingual countries such as South Africa, language has been recognised as a health care barrier preventing patients from receiving quality care. Equipping health care staff with communication skills in the additional languages, represents an attempt to bridge a vital barrier in the South African health care system. The study proves that offering communication skills courses in additional languages, begins to equip health care staff to be multilingual, that allows patients to communicate about their illnesses within their mother tongues.
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    Building freeways: piloting communication skills in additional languages to health service personnel in Cape Town, South Africa
    (2017) Claassen, Joel; Jama, Zukile; Manga, Nayna; Lewis, Minnie; Hellenberg, Derek
    BACKGROUND: This study reflects on the development and teaching of communication skills courses in additional national languages to health care staff within two primary health care facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. These courses were aimed at addressing the language disparities that recent research has identified globally between patients and health care staff. Communication skills courses were offered to staff at two Metropolitan District Health Services clinics to strengthen patient access to health care services. This study reflects on the communicative proficiency in the additional languages that were offered to health care staff. METHODS: A mixed-method approach was utilised during this case study with quantitative data-gathering through surveys and qualitative analysis of assessment results. The language profiles of the respective communities were assessed through data obtained from the South African National census, while staff language profiles were obtained at the health care centres. Quantitative measuring, by means of a patient survey at the centres, occurred on a randomly chosen day to ascertain the language profile of the patient population. Participating staff performed assessments at different phases of the training courses to determine their skill levels by the end of the course. RESULTS: The performances of the participating staff during the Xhosa and Afrikaans language courses were assessed, and the development of the staff communicative competencies was measured. Health care staff learning the additional languages could develop Basic or Intermediate Xhosa and Afrikaans that enables communication with patients. CONCLUSIONS: In multilingual countries such as South Africa, language has been recognised as a health care barrier preventing patients from receiving quality care. Equipping health care staff with communication skills in the additional languages, represents an attempt to bridge a vital barrier in the South African health care system. The study proves that offering communication skills courses in additional languages, begins to equip health care staff to be multilingual, that allows patients to communicate about their illnesses within their mother tongues.
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    De-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, Francis
    The 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?”
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    The language socialisation experiences of a grade r child in a black middle-class multilingual family
    (2019) Molate, Babalwayashe; Mckinney, Carolyn
    South Africa (SA) is home to 11 official named languages; its Language in Education Policy (LIEP) identifies multilingualism as one of the defining characteristics of its citizenry (DOE, 1997). Moreover, English is the official Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) in most ex-Model C schools nationwide. It is the language that is reported to be valued by the middleclass, people who are known for placing a high premium on education (Soudien, 2004; Alexander, 2005). The aim of this ethnographic Language Socialisation study is to explore the language socialisation experiences of a Grade R child in a Black middle-class multilingual family residing in a Cape Town suburb. The study is framed by the question: What are the language socialisation experiences of a child from a Black middle-class multilingual family? It uses a socio-cultural approach, drawing from linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics to critically analyse the language ideologies, language practices and linguistic repertoires evident in both the home and school domains across which the young child traverses. Concepts such as multilingualism, Family Language Policy and ‘mother tongue’ identity are reviewed and used to gain insight into the lived language experiences of the Grade R child. The concepts of assimilation (Soudien, 2004) and anglonormativity (Christie & McKinney, 2017) are reflected on as markers of school language practices and ideologies. Findings reveal that the Grade R child is an emergent multilingual who participates meaningfully in multilingual conversations with her family but only produces English. Despite the evident heteroglossia (Bhaktin, 1991) of the family’s language practices through translanguaging (Garcia, 2009; Creese and Blackledge, 2010) and drawing from the range of resources in their linguistic repertoires (Busch, 2012), the parents continue to use their Tswana and Xhosa ethnicity as markers of their language identities. The parents want their children to speak their heritage languages for identity reasons. They also want them to speak English to ‘fit in’ with their peers and to access learning. They see the teaching of Tswana and Xhosa as their sole responsibility thereby absolving the school. Their view enables the schools’ status quo of anglonormativity to go unchallenged. The child, thus, experiences heritage languages as identity markers and languages reserved for home, and English as a valuable language resource that gives access to learning. The notion of a single language identity remains complex for a child who is expected to be multilingual at home but monolingual at school.