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Multilingualism going from strength to strength

23 December 2024 | Story Supplied | Photo Supplied

Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director: UFS Academy for Multilingualism.

A multilingual environment at institutions of higher learning not only promotes inclusivity, but also ensures more effective teaching and learning.

The University of the Free State (UFS) is at the forefront of developing multilingual initiatives – underscored by solid research – to the benefit of the entire South African student body.

This year yielded a number of significant milestones.

UFS Academy for Multilingualism

The UFS Academy for Multilingualism was established four years ago, flowing from the UFS Language Policy that expresses the university’s commitment to multilingualism, with particular emphasis on Sesotho, Afrikaans, and isiZulu. The academy aims to promote these languages on institutional and social levels through various academic and community-based projects and initiatives.

Among its key aims are: Advancing Sesotho and isiZulu as academic languages; incorporating multilingualism into learning and teaching; promoting multilingualism as a social asset; and improving English as a language of instruction. In all these areas, groundbreaking work was done in 2024.

Taking the lead with innovative translanguaging practices

One of the UFS Academy for Multilingualism’s most promising focus areas is the facilitation of trans-language tutorial sessions in various faculties. Translanguaging is a pedagogical practice where students receive input in one language and produce output through the medium of another language, in order to maximise learning and promote full understanding of the subject matter. It also serves the important function of developing what speakers perceive to be their ‘weaker’ language. In a university context, this would entail that lectures are presented in English, while students get a chance to discuss the subject matter and ask or answer questions in tutorial groups using another language – one in which they feel more or equally comfortable. This results in the dynamic and fluid use of multiple languages in teaching, learning, and communication within lecture rooms.

The value of these practices lies not only in expanding cultural horizons and students’ exposure to different languages – they, in fact, also promote better understanding and knowledge retention. In a monolingual teaching situation, for instance, it is very possible for students to answer questions or complete assignments without full understanding, because processing for meaning may not have actually occurred. Sections from textbooks can merely be copied or adapted, without reflecting solid comprehension. This is, however, less prevalent with translanguaging, because reading a topic in one language and then discussing it in another requires the subject matter to first be processed and digested before it is reproduced.

Multilingualism highlights in 2024

UFS Language Policy in all UFS languages

The UFS Language Policy has been made available in Sesotho, Afrikaans, isiZulu, and English since the beginning of 2024 in order to make this important information available to staff and students in the languages they best understand and/or prefer.

International Mother Tongue Day celebrations

In February, the UFS Academy for Multilingualism hosted International Mother Tongue Day celebrations, which included a Sesotho Short Story writing competition, acknowledging all the languages (local and international) represented by its diverse student and staff bodies.

Hosting Translanguaging in the Global South Symposium 2024

Great strides have been made towards sharing knowledge and expertise with local and international universities in the field of translanguaging pedagogies and practices in higher education, as the Qwaqwa Campus in the Eastern Free State hosted the Translanguaging in the Global South Symposium in March, attracting expert local and international keynote speakers.

Development and intellectualisation of Sesotho terminology

An innovative project bringing together subject specialists, Sesotho linguists, terminologists, and translators, did groundbreaking work in 2024 to develop Sesotho terminology in the fields of accounting, mathematics, law, psychology, agriculture, research, and social work.

Development of South African Sign Language (SASL) as an academic language

The UFS has started with a process of standardising and verifying SASL terminology for interpreters in various disciplines, to avoid confusion and ensure uniformity and quality learning and teaching for Deaf students.

Publication and launching of academic books written in African languages

In order to encourage research outputs in African languages, the university has embarked on a process to publish academic books that showcase the capacity of African languages to express empirical and conceptual research findings in various African languages, such as Sesotho, isiZulu, Sepedi, and Tshivenda.

Translation of PhD abstracts

During 2024, 48 PhD abstracts from the seven faculties were translated by the UFS Academy for Multilingualism and made available in Sesotho, isiZulu, and Afrikaans, in order to enhance exposure and understanding for the wider UFS community.

Training of academic staff on multilingual pedagogies

In mid-2024, academic training workshops were launched to engage academic staff in the current issues and debates on multilingualism in higher education and to empower them with theoretical knowledge and practical strategies of teaching in multilingual classrooms.

External funding for multilingualism projects

Funding from the Department of Higher Education and other institutions was applied for and secured in 2024 to boost multilingualism practices at the university, with a specific focus on the development of Sesotho and South African Sign Language as academic languages.

UFS Multilingual Mokete

This celebration of language and culture has become a popular annual event on the UFS calendar and was hosted this year on the Qwaqwa Campus, featuring various local artists.

Multilingual collaborations for societal impact

In 2024, the UFS initiated and sustained a number of successful partnerships with other institutions of higher learning, such as the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Walter Sisulu University, and the University of Cape Town, sharing knowledge and expertise in the development of Sesotho, isiZulu, and isiXhosa.

Research on multilingualism

Various research publications on the impact of multilingualism at the UFS have been produced for DHET-accredited journals.

The UFS supports the United Nations General Assembly’s proclamation of the decade from 2022 to 2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages and will continue to show its commitment towards multilingualism with bold and innovative strategies.

News Archive

SA universities are becoming the battlegrounds for political gain

2010-11-02

Prof. Kalie Strydom.

No worthwhile contribution can be made to higher education excellence if you do not understand and acknowledge the devastating, but unfortunately unavoidable role of party politics in the system and universities of higher education and training (HET).

This statement was made by Prof. Kalie Strydom during his valedictory lecture made on the Main Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein recently.

Prof. Strydom, who was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the UFS in 2010, presented a lecture on the theme: The Long Walk to Higher Education and Training Excellence: The Struggle of Comrades and Racists. He provided perspectives on politics in higher education and training (HET) and shared different examples explaining the meaning of excellence in HET in relation to politics.

“At the HET systems level I was fortunate to participate in the deliberations in the early nineties to prepare policy perspectives that could be used by the ANC in HET policy making after the 1994 elections. At these deliberations one of the important issues discussed was the typical educational and training pyramid recognised in many countries, to establish and maintain successful education and training. The educational pyramid in successful countries was compared to the SA “inverted” pyramid that had already originated during apartheid for all races, but unfortunately exploded during the 16 years of democracy to a dangerous situation of 3 million out-of school and post-school youth with very few education and training opportunities,” he said.

In his lecture, Prof. Strydom answered questions like: Why could we as higher educationists not persuade the new democratically elected government to create a successful education and training pyramid with a strong intermediate college sector in the nineties? What was the politics like in the early and late nineties about disallowing the acceptance of the successful pyramid of education and training? Why do we only now in the latest DHET strategic planning 2010–2015 have this successful pyramid as a basis for policymaking and planning?

At an institutional level he explained the role of politics by referring to the Reitz incident at the UFS and the infamous Soudien report on racism in higher education in South Africa highlighting explosive racial situations in our universities and the country. “To understand this situation we need to acknowledge that we are battling with complex biases influencing the racial situation,” he said.

“White and black, staff and students at our universities are constantly battling with the legacy of the past which is being used, abused and conveniently forgotten, as well as critical events that white and black experience every day of their lives, feeding polarisation of extreme views while eroding common ground. Examples vary from the indoctrination and prejudice that is continued within most homes, churches and schools; mass media full of murder, rape, corruption; political parties skewing difficult issues for indiscrete political gain; to frustrating non-delivery in almost all spheres of life which frustrates and irritates everyone, all feeding racial stereo typing and prejudice,” said Prof. Strydom.

A South African philosopher, Prof. Willie Esterhuyse, recently used the metaphor of an “Elephant in our lounge” to describe the syndrome of racism that is part of the lives of white and black South Africans in very different ways. He indicated that all of us are aware of the elephant, but we choose not to talk about it, an attitude described by Ruth Frankenberg as ‘colour evasiveness’, which denies the nature and scope of the problem.

Constructs related to race are so contentious that most stakeholders and role-players are unwilling to confront the meanings that they assign to very prominent dimensions of their experience; neither does management at the institutions have enough staff (higher educationists?) with the competencies to interrogate these meanings, or generate shared meanings amongst staff and students (common ground). A good example that could be compared with “the elephant in our lounge” remark is the recent paper of Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS on race categorisation in education and training.

According to Prof. Strydom, universities in South Africa are increasingly becoming the battlegrounds for political gain which creates a polarised atmosphere on campuses and crowds out the moderate middle ground, thereby subverting the role and function of the university as an institution within a specific context, interpreted globally and locally.

Striving for excellence, mostly free from the negative influences of politics, in HET, from the point of view of the higher educationist, is that we should, through comparative literature review and research, re-conceptualise the university as an institution in a specific context. This entails carefully considering environment and the positioning of the university leading to a specific institutional culture and recognising the fact that institutional cultures are complicated by many subcultures in academe (faculties) and student life (residences/new generations of commuter students).

Another way forward in striving for excellence, mostly free from politics, is to ensure that we understand the complexities of governing a university better. D.W. Leslie (2003) mentions formidable tasks related to governance influenced by politics:

Balancing legitimacy and effectiveness.
Leading along two dimensions: getting work done and engaging people.
Differentiating between formal university structures and the functions of universities as they adapt and evolve.
Bridging the divergence between cultural and operational imperatives of the bureaucratic and professional sides of the university.

Prof. Strydom concluded by stating that it is possible to continue with an almost never ending list of important themes in HE studies adding perspectives on why it is so easy to misuse universities for politics instead of recognising our responsibility to carefully consider contributions to transformation in such an immensely complicated institution as the university within a higher education and training system.

Download Valedictory lecture of Prof. Kalie Strydom (Pdf)

Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication (acting)
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl@ufs.ac.za
29 October 2010

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