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10 August 2022 | Story Edzani Nephalela | Photo iStock
Several presenters presented their themes during the translanguaging virtual session. The seminar sought to improve participants' awareness of using more than one language in lecture rooms across the institution, particularly for tutoring and academics.

Language continues to be a barrier to access and success for many students at South African higher education institutions. Despite their status as official languages, indigenous languages have in the past and at present, structurally not been afforded the official space to function as academic and scientific languages.

Language policy for higher education seeks to address the challenge of the underdevelopment and underutilisation of official African languages at higher education institutions whilst simultaneously sustaining the standard and utilisation of languages that are already developed. 

The University of the Free State (UFS) Centre for Teaching and Learning hosted a multilingualism virtual seminar on 20 July 2022 that aimed to broaden an understanding of utilising more than one language within lecture rooms across the university, specifically for tutoring and academics. The following speakers presented various topics at the seminar:

Prof Makalela stated that the foundation of sustainable growth is excellent education, but the issue is, are we any closer to what one considers quality education? “You can’t, in my opinion. How can we know if you don’t examine epistemic difficulties at this level?” he further enlightened. 

Linguists believe that the practice of “translanguaging” can aid in learning, and the word has recently gained popularity in literature on bilingual and multilingual education with various universities incorporating these changes in their policies and to ensure that it’s all-inclusive as indicated by Dr Tolani Hlongwa. She further explained that languages are tools to navigate better understanding, whilst English should be used as a tool to communicate, not to measure intelligence.

What is the UFS’ role in addressing this?

The university’s language policy expresses its commitment to multilingualism, with particular emphasis on Sesotho, Afrikaans, and isiZulu. This policy ensures that language is not a barrier to equity of access, opportunity, and success in academic programmes or to access to the UFS administration. 

The UFS also developed an Academy for Multilingualism. This academy hosts the Multilingual Mokete, a popular annual tradition celebrating different cultural expressions in visual art, poetry, storytelling, drama, music, and songs by different language groups and in the different languages that are dominant at the UFS (i.e. English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, isiZulu, and Sign Language. 

In partnership with the University of Cape Town (UCT) and UKZN, the UFS will also conduct a Multilingualism Education Project colloquium on the new language policy framework for South African public higher education institutions on 28-29 September 2022. This language policy used in the new policy framework for public higher education institutions as well as its impacts will be examined in this virtual seminar. This is also an opportunity for diverse stakeholders to contribute suggestions on how to improve the existing status of language policy.

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Fun in the sun at first-years swimming gala
2016-02-12

Description: Swimming Gala Tags: Swimming Gala

Residences of the University of the Free State showed off their colours and cheered their swimmers to victory at the first-year swimming gala on the Bloemfontein Campus.
Photo: Johan Roux

The first-year students’ swimming gala is always a much-anticipated event, especially after the participants have rubbed shoulders with residence competitors at the first-year athletics. This year’s gala, which took place on 5 February 2016 at the Lindsay Saker swimming pool on the Bloemfontein Campus, proved as exhilarating as always.

The body painting competition, held through the University of the Free State Student Representative Council (SRC) portfolio of Media & Marketing, and sponsored by ABSA, was re-introduced.

Colleges in colour

Before the swimming, spectators had the opportunity to look at the body painting creations presented by each college. Colleges chose one of ten themes randomly. Nonetheless, true artistry was on display. South College were awarded the body painting floating trophy.

When asked about this year's competition, SRC Media & Marketing, Peo Segano, had this to say: "I questioned the relevance of it, but I got the opinion of the residence committees and how they felt about it.
“The majority voted for it to be re-introduced, and ABSA was more than happy to sponsor the paints and some treats.”

Description: Swimming gala video photo Tags: Swimming gala

Video clip

Soon after that, it was down to the business. The swimming started, and each residence was cheering ecstatically for their fellow freshmen as everyone waited in anticipation to see who would be crowned the kings or queens of the water.

Kings and queens of the water

Although many had sung their voices away, they continued to show their spirit through dance and movement. Then, residences were ready to hear whether it had all paid off. Armentum showed consistent effort in this regard, thus ensuring them of the spirit trophy.

To close off the festivities, the final announcements were made. Sonnedou was crowned the female residence winners, while Abraham Fischer (Vishuis) received the title of best male residence.

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