Many learners in South Africa are bilingual or trilingual or even have a knowledge of four or more languages. They have the task of mastering English in school and in the wider world. Instead of being apologetic about their English ability, they should be commended for their determination and courage. In South Africa, they need a good command of English and so they are ready to commit their time and energy to acquiring English in their quest to gain competence and become productive members of society.
Afrikaans may not be the most widely spoken language in South Africa, but it remains the bigger language than English.
According to a census done in 2011, Zulu is the most widely spoken language in the country with 11,6 million people who speak Zulu. This is followed by Xhosa with 8.15 million people speaking Xhosa. Afrikaans is spoken by 6.85 million people, followed by English with 4,9 million speakers, Sepedi 4,6 million and Setswana 4.7 million.
2.8 million people in the Western Cape speak Afrikaans, while Johannesburg has 1.6 million English speaking people.
Education and language are interrelated because all teaching is given through the medium of language. Language is deemed to be both a prerequisite for thought and a conveyer of thought and therefore impacts the extent to which a child's intelligence is portrayed. Linguistic diversity in the South African context is a complex issue. The educators are under constant pressure and it has increasingly become their task and responsibility to develop strategies in an effort to
enable quality education for learners.
The Language Tree
Multilingual Learning
Mathematics education begins in language. It advances and stumbles because of language and its outcomes are often in language (Durkin, 1991:3).
Researchers developed an aid that would assist learners to relate mathematics terms and concepts in English with terms in their own languages. The study determined whether a visual multilingual learner companion brought change in learners' performance in mathematics. The result indicated that the marks in the mathematics of the treatment group improved. The teachers were complimentary about the learner companion and indicated that they would utilize this going forward in their teaching.
Language talks to you
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The critical period of language acquisition is when it takes place effortlessly in a natural setting (Brown, 1994). This acquisition inevitably influences the acquired language skills and vocabulary of monolingual children as compared to bilingual and multilingual children. Inadequate language acquisition then results in the inefficient actualization of intelligence (Vygotsky, 1989).
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It has been argued that learners who are taught in a non-mother tongue language probably do not achieve academic excellence, not because they are less able, but due to an artificial created linguistic problem (Danesi, 1988).
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