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Multilingualism at the UFS reaches remarkable milestones

15 June 2021 | Story Dr Cindé Greyling

Drummers entertained the Mokete crowds throughout the day.

During the past eight months, the University of the Free State Academy for Multilingualism has reached remarkable milestones. The Academy for Multilingualism was born from the UFS Language Policy (2016) and was approved by Senate in November 2020.

Letting languages grow

Multilingualism at the UFS entails the use of English as the primary medium of instruction, with Afrikaans, Sesotho, and isiZulu used selectively in tutorials to support the achievement of greater levels of academic literacy and understanding of the epistemology of the discipline, mostly among undergraduate students. “Accordingly, the academy’s drivers are to develop Sesotho and Isizulu as academic languages, encourage multilingualism in teaching and learning and as a social asset, and to develop English as a language of instruction,” says Dr Peet van Aardt, Custodian of the Academy for Multilingualism.

Developing Sesotho and Isizulu as academic languages

Academic word lists from seven departments are in the process of being translated, in conjunction with the Unit of Lexicography, to create glossaries. The team at South African Sign Languages will add videos to these glossaries to provide unique and inclusive content in the realm of multilingualism.

In April 2021, the academy – in collaboration with the TK Mopeli Library on the Qwaqwa Campus – hosted the launch of an English and Sesotho book on the campus. This work, Meriana ya Dimela tsa Basotho Medicinal Plants, was authored by Prof Rodney Moffett, honorary Research Fellow on the Qwaqwa Campus.

Multilingualism in teaching and learning

To assist students in overcoming the language barrier caused by English as medium of instruction, the academy is working with the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s A_STEP programme to pilot the use of translanguaging in tutor sessions. It is currently done in Law and Geography on the Bloemfontein Campus, and in Academic Literacy on the Qwaqwa Campus.

Voice-over translations of English lessons in the Faculties of Theology and Religion into Afrikaans and Sesotho paved the way for the academy to proceed with this practice in other subjects. They have been able to start with the Departments of Political Studies and Governance (Afrikaans, Sesotho, isiZulu) and Criminology (Sesotho).

English as a language of instruction

The university’s Academic Literacy and Language Development (ALLD) unit has also launched their English Academic Literacy courses for the Faculties of Law, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Education, the Humanities, Health Sciences, and Economic and Management Sciences.

UFS staff will also be trained in teaching and translanguaging practices. Thus far, one lecturer has been nominated to track her use of translanguaging in the Academic Literacy classroom on the Qwaqwa Campus.

Multilingualism as a social asset

The fourth annual iCAN (Initiative for Creative African Narratives) was launched in April 2021. This project motivates students from all three campuses to write short stories in their mother tongue, and at the end of the year an anthology of stories will be published. In addition, some of the English stories will be injected into the English Academic Literacy courses for first-year students in order to localise the curriculum.

The Kovsies Multilingual Mokete will be hosted online this year and will include activities from the Bloemfontein, Qwaqwa, and South Campuses. The theme of this year’s festival is ‘Hearing you, hearing me’, ‘Ukungizwe, ukukuzwa’ (isiZulu), ‘Ons luister na mekaar’ (Afrikaans), and ‘Mmamele ke o mamele’ (Sesotho).

Academy for Multilingualism extending its footprint

A building that will house the academy on the Qwaqwa Campus is currently being built next to the new media lab. The building will comprise, among others, a 100-seater multipurpose lecture hall that can be converted into four smaller lecture halls. Similarly, a building for the academy is being constructed on the Bloemfontein Campus.

“The Academy for Multilingualism wants to ensure that the UFS becomes the South African leader in multilingualism, and at the impressive rate that they are delivering outputs, this goal will be reached soon,” says Dr Van Aardt.

News Archive

Is milk really so well-known, asks UFS’s Prof. Osthoff

2011-03-17

Prof. Garry Osthoff
Photo: Stephen Collett

Prof. Garry Osthoff opened a whole new world of milk to the audience in his inaugural lecture, Milk: the well-known (?) food, in our Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Prof. Osthoff has done his research in protein chemistry, immuno-chemistry and enzymology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria and post-doctoral research at the Bowman-Grey School of Medicine, North Carolina, USA. That was instrumental in establishing food chemistry at the university.

He is involved in chemical aspects of food, with a focus on dairy science and technology. He is also involved in the research of cheese processing as well as milk evolution and concentrated on milk evolution in his lecture. Knowledge of milk from dairy animals alone does not provide all the explanations of milk as food.

Some aspects he highlighted in his lecture were that milk is the first food to be utilised by young mammals and that it is custom-designed for each species. “However, mankind is an opportunist and has found ways of easy access to food by the practice of agriculture, where plants as well as animals were employed or rather exploited,” he said.

The cow is the best-known milk producer, but environmental conditions forced man to select other animals. In spite of breeding selection, cattle seem not to have adapted to the most extreme conditions such as high altitudes with sub-freezing temperatures, deserts and marshes.

Prof. Osthoff said the consumption of the milk as an adult is not natural; neither is the consumption of milk across species. This practice of mankind may often have consequences, when signs of malnutrition or diseases are noticed. Two common problems are an allergy to milk and lactose intolerance.

Allergies are normally the result of an immune response of the consumer to the foreign proteins found in the milk. In some cases it might help to switch from one milk source to another, such as switching from cow’s milk to goat’s milk.

Prof. Osthoff said lactose intolerance – the inability of adult humans to digest lactose, the milk sugar – is natural, as adults lose that ability to digest lactose. The symptoms of the condition are stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This problem is mainly found in the warmer climates of the world. This could be an indication of early passive development of dairy technology. In these regions milk could not be stored in its fresh form, but in a fermented form, in which case the lactose was pre-digested by micro-organisms, and the human population never adapted to digesting lactose in adulthood.

According to Prof. Osthoff, it is basically the lactose in milk that has spurred dairy technology. Its fermentation has resulted in the development of yoghurts and all the cheeses that we know. In turn, the intolerance to lactose has spurred a further technological solution: lactose-free milk is currently produced by pre-digestion of lactose with enzymes.

It was realised that the milks and products from different species differed in quality aspects such as keeping properties and taste. It was also realised that the nutritional properties differed as well as their effects on health. One example is the mentioned allergy against cow’s milk proteins, which may be solved by the consumption of goat’s milk. The nutritional benefits and technological processing of milk aroused an interest in more information, and it was realised that the information gained from human milk and that of the few domesticated species do not provide a complete explanation of the properties of milk as food. Of the 250 species of milk which have been studied, only the milk of humans and a few domesticated dairy animals has been studied in detail.

Media Release
15 March 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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