Translanguaging research among multilingual students has received considerable attention across different contexts of practice. The most robust contexts in translanguaging research have been the classroom contexts between teacher and students. This study examined the affordances of translanguaging spaces "between class sessions" in…

Negation is a cornerstone of human language and one of the few universals found in all languages. Without negation, neither categorization nor efficient communication would be possible. Languages, however, differ remarkably in how they express negation. It is yet widely unknown how the way negation is marked influences the acquisition process of…

Background: Globally, teaching practice has been at the heart of teacher education programmes. For quality teaching and learning, literacy student teachers are expected to develop metacognitive attributes and critical thinking to integrate theory and practice. Because of the dominance of autonomous models in literacy teaching and learning…

Background: Several isiXhosa home language (HL) learners are excluded from meaningful mathematics learning because they are taught in English. Not only do teachers lack epistemological and pedagogical confidence in using multiple languages when teaching mathematics, but there are no mathematical registers for African languages that allow for…

Judicial discourse can grant or deprive liberty to litigants. It is, therefore, important to ensure fair hearing during trials and even more as courtrooms have become multilingual settings. In the Court of First Instance of Bafoussam, French (one of the official languages of Cameroon) often come into contact with more than 250 national languages.…

The lack of equivalence between African languages on the one hand and Afrikaans and English on the other hand under the governments that ruled South Africa until the collapse of apartheid has seriously undermined the status of African languages. Indigenous South Africans experienced decades of marginalisation -- so much, in fact, that many,…

In most universities in South Africa, English is still preferred as the medium of instruction. However, most schools in South Africa have adopted a home-language education approach. Those school students then have a lower English proficiency compared to other students from English schools. Providing these students with instructional assistance…

Teaching physical sciences in English as the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) has presented numerous challenges, particularly for learners who are not proficient in the language. The South African government is increasingly considering the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction for subjects such as physical sciences,…

A substantial body of research has examined the role of English in South Africans' linguistic repertoires. Many of these studies have investigated whether a language shift towards English might be underway among first-language (L1) speakers of the indigenous languages. At the same time, the role of English in the repertoires of L1 English speakers…

Bilingual education that incorporates a local language alongside the official language has become an increasingly common approach in sub-Saharan Africa for improving literacy rates and learning outcomes. Evidence suggests that bilingual instruction is largely associated with positive learning and literacy outcomes globally. However, the adoption…

Introduction: Today, classes made up of learners with different linguistic backgrounds are a reality in many countries, including South Africa. Thus, this study was driven by the need to explore the various preconditions that must be met for the inclusion of home languages in an English First Additional Language context in the Further Education…

In recent (socio)linguistic research there is a growing awareness that rural, small-scale multilingualism as the most widespread communicative setting across the globe. Yet, literacy programmes accepting and incorporating this diversity are non-existent. LILIEMA is a unique educational programme currently based in Senegal that addresses the need…

The current article studies the competencies of plurilingual students and how these competencies are exploited in the learning of French as a Foreign Language. Adopting a translanguaging theoretical approach, we argue that learners of foreign languages who already speak at least one other language have some linguistic competencies which manifest…

The main focus of the article is on teachers' classroom language practices in eight primary schools in Oshana and Khomas school regions. Language ideologies and translanguaging practices were used as a theoretical framework to evaluate the language ecologies that were created by the language practices in the schools included in the research study.…

Storytelling passes down traditions and values while preserving languages and serving as a natural site for linguistic innovation and creativity. This article describes an approach to creating multilingual, multimodal stories that were developed for an after-school club at a rural Tanzanian secondary school. Club members told stories, wrote…