The effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies of fourth grade learners

Previous research suggests that enhanced cognitive and metacognitive skills are achieved when translanguaging techniques are applied in a multilingual classroom. This paper presents findings on the effects of translanguaging techniques on teaching grade 4 learners how to apply relevant background knowledge when drawing inferences during reading. It examines the efficacy of simultaneously using the learners’ home language and second language in reading development among bilingual Xhosa-English readers in a rural school in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design where the participants attempted pre-tests in the targeted languages and then after an intervention were provided interventions using translanguaging techniques, thereafter they attempted post-tests. The findings indicate improved performance in terms of learners’ use of background knowledge when drawing inferences, instead of heavily relying on the reading text. The researchers argue for a literacy model that integrates skills and practices drawn from all accessible linguistic repertoires of learners when dealing with reading development at elementary grades since this helps learners develop a sense of self, which in return allows them to be active participants in their learning

Nativization of English among Bantu Language Speakers in South Africa

This study investigates characteristic features of Black South African English (BSAE) paying attention to the role of the Bantu language substrate system in the nativization process of the variety. Using prototypical features identified in previous studies and additional data from speakers of another Bantu language, Sepedi, this study examines the influence of first language features on morpho-syntactic, phonological, and discourse and pragmatic features. The results of the study show that Bantu language logic plays a pivotal role in framing the rules and systematic production of the BSAE features. It is therefore argued that developments in BSAE show that it has evolved into an endonormative variety in its own right and that it has future prospects for standardization due to the demographic strength and improved social rank of its speakers. Recommendations for language planing are offered in the end for adaptation to other comparable situations

Translanguaging as a vehicle for epistemic access: cases for reading comprehension and multilingual interactions

African multilingualism has always been construed from a monoglossic (i.e., one language at a time) lens despite the pretensions of plural language policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study reported in this paper explored the efficacy of alternating languages of input and output in the same lessons in order to offset linguistic fixity that is often experienced in monolingual classrooms. I present two case studies of translanguaging practices, one at an institution of higher learning and another in the intermediate phase (primary school). The results from these cases show that the use of more than one language by multilingual learners in classroom settings provides cognitive and social advantages for them. Using what I refer to as the ubuntu translanguaging model, I make a case that fuzziness and blurring of boundaries between languages in the translanguaging classes are (i) necessary and relevant features of the 21st century to enhance epistemic access for speakers in complex multilingual spaces, and that they are (ii) indexical to the pre-colonial African value system of ubuntu. Useful recommendations for classroom applications and further research are considered at the end of the paper

“Our academics are intellectually colonised”: Multi-languaging and Fees Must Fall

there is no doubt that the Fees Must Fall student movement in the south African higher education system has received wide-ranging documentation and world-wide coverage. A plethora of studies and documentaries on the students’, lecturers’ and parents’ involvement have seized the moment to explain the complex dynamics of the most unprecedented student revolution in the new sociopolitical dispensation since the fall of apartheid in 1994. While social scientists agree that ways of managing ‘revolutions’ in the 21st century using the old apartheid style of riot control is both  obsolete and irrelevant due to more fluid ways of mass mobilisation, very little is known about the intricacies of language use and how this presents novel ways of knowing and self-affirmation among postmodern students. In this paper, I analyse key instances of complex multilingual encounters in the process of meaning-making during the protests. I show how multilingualism and the exchange of ideas in more than one language has been instrumental in pulling the  demonstrators together across the wider spectrum of languages spoken in south Africa – something that debunks myths around intelligibility levels in African languages. Given the efficacy of this complex web of communication in times of distress, despair, and dispossession, I take a linguistic position that multi-languaging is an effective mass-mobilisation strategy and a potential tool to decolonise formal university discourses that are largely monolingual and  exclusionary. Implications for learning and teaching are highlighted at the end of the paper

Ubuntu translanguaging: An alternative framework for complex multilingual encounters

Multilingual education practices worldwide are still characterised by monolingual bias that can be tracked as far back as the European Enlightenment period. Yet the majority of learners employ meta-discursive regimes that are versatile, mobile and fluid in response to transnational mobility and blurring of boundaries between nation states in the 21st century. Taking account of African sociolinguistic contexts predating European colonialism, I draw attention to the obsolete nature of one-ness ideology and its sequential, linear and positivist methods in African classrooms. I argue for the African value system of ubuntu as a heuristic to theorise infinite relations of dependency between languages and literacies and how this system reflects a cultural competence upon which literacy practices need to be anchored. Useful pedagogic recommendations for teaching literacy from the ubuntu perspective are provided for adaptation in related contexts

Janks, H., & Makalela, L. (2013). Engaging a visionary: Horizons of the (im)possible. Education as Change, 17(2), 219-228.

Neville Alexander has had a profound impact on the way we think about language education and language policy in South Africa. His views on the harmonisation of African languages, mother-tongue education, the position of English and the importance of literacy have shaped academic and policy debates since the early 1990s. Visionaries are able to combine insight with foresight and so imagine a different way forward. In this way they change what Roger Simon describes as the ‘horizon of possibility’. This article examines Alexander's positions critically in relation to questions of power, identity, access and social transformation, in order to understand both their take-up and their rejection. Both history and geography – time and space – are central to this discussion of his achievements

Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa: Recentering Silenced Voices from the Global South

This book interrogates and problematises African multilingualism as it is currently understood in language education and research. It challenges the enduring colonial matrices of power hidden within mainstream conceptions of multilingualism that have been propagated in the Global North and then exported to the Global South under the aegis of colonial modernity and pretensions of universal epistemic relevance. The book contributes new points of method, theory and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on decolonial epistemology by introducing the notion of coloniality of language – a summary term that describes the ways in which notions of language and multilingualism in post-colonial societies remain colonial. The authors begin the process of mapping out what a socially realistic notion of multilingualism would look like if we took into account the voices of marginalised and ignored African communities of practice – both on the African continent and in the diasporas

Developing summary writing skills through translanguaging

Translanguaging, an umbrella term used to refer to pedagogical approaches that engage the learners’ home languages as a resource, is praised for positive outcomes when its techniques are employed in teaching and learning in multilingual settings. This article examines the effects of translanguaging on learners’ ability to reorganise texts after reading texts in isiXhosa as the learners’ home language, and English as their first additional language. The study adopted a Solomon four-group quasi-experimental design in which there were four groups of participants, viz. two experimental groups and two control groups. Four Grade 4 rural schools comprising 215 learners aged between 9 and 12 years participated in the study. The results showed a positive correlation between the translanguaging techniques employed and learner performance in the ability to write summaries. However, learner performance improved less in English than it did in the home language. The study demonstrates that substantial gains can be obtained in reading development in elementary grades when translanguaging techniques are exploited. It, therefore, attempts to provide alternative means to address concerns about substandard reading abilities of African learners at elementary grades in South Africa

Translanguaging and orthographic harmonisation: A cross-lingual reading literacy in a Johannesburg school

The last three years has seen increased interest in translanguaging as an alternative pedagogical strategy for multilingual classrooms in South Africa. These studies questioned the validity of language boundaries, especially in complex multilingual encounters where notions of home language or mother tongue do not apply. There is, however, a paucity of research on translingual reading performance of learners from cognate languages in complex multilingual contexts. This study investigated the reading comprehension and rate of readers of Setswana, Sesotho and Sepedi in a South African township. Sixty (n = 60) grade 4–6 elementary school children were assessed through a battery of tests that were based on Curriculum-Based Measures. The results of the assessment show that there were no statistically significant differences between learners of these three cognate languages in both the reading comprehension and reading rate measures. Using the ubuntu translanguaging framework, we argue that the readers’ performance shows the possible effects of orthographic overlap and the value system of confluence (botho), which are found among speakers of these languages. Secondly, the results challenge the perceived boundaries between these languages and support earlier claims for possible harmonisation of their orthographic systems, i.e. that there will be no negative epistemic effect on the readers of these cognate languages. In the end, we consider implications for translanguaging pedagogy and materials development, and highlight areas for future research