Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

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

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept