Background: The article critiques the monoglossic ideologies that dominate current educational practices in South Africa, which often marginalise indigenous African languages and fail to facilitate the dynamic multilingual realities of learners. It examines the impact of English language pedagogies in multilingual settings, particularly in South…

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.…

Uganda's "early exit" language policy positions African languages ambiguously in public education provision. Runyoro-Rutooro and Runyankore-Rukiga are spoken in Western Uganda in public spaces where translanguaging happens as a matter of course. These languages are heard at pre-primary and lower primary levels but are superseded by…

The primary goal of language teaching is to afford learners, proficiency in communicating in the target language, self-development as well as intercultural understanding of languages in the learning process. The teacher is therefore charged with the task of selecting appropriate strategies to effectively achieve his pedagogic goals, one of which…

After apartheid, English became the lingua franca in South Africa and African-language speakers continued to be marginalised despite laws attesting to the equality of African languages. This article describes an attempt to rectify the effects of this marginalisation using translanguaging to improve students' academic literacies and pass rates at…

Background: Making predictions on how events might unfold when reading a text improves comprehension. Research on reading and making predictions tends to focus predominantly on the effects of making predictions as a reading strategy in monolingual contexts. So far, there is a paucity of research on the effects of reading development strategies in…

When teaching multilingual learners, it is critical for teachers to use instructional strategies that engage and nurture language and biliteracy skills. In this practice-based paper, we address how teachers can utilize translanguaging strategies to recognize and build multilingual practices while offering all learners opportunities to share their…

This paper discussed Cross-Linguistic Transfer (CLT) and Language Proficiency in multilingual education in general and highlighted samples of CLT in Burundi as the existing literature reveals. As there exist CLT on all linguistic levels, this discussion has provided examples of phonological (including phonetics), lexical and semantic, and…

In post-apartheid South Africa, 11 languages, including English and indigenous languages, were given equal status as official languages. Yet, more than 25 years after democracy, Black parents still believe that their children's wealth and success depend on English, and therefore, send them to English-medium schools where they take English as a…

This article reports on the outcome of utilising a multilingual strategy that promotes translanguaging to support primary grade learners and the enablers and constraints of the implementation of such strategies. Purposive sampling was used to select two schools. Grade 5 and 6 learners (N = 162) and their teachers (N = 3) participated in the study.…

A central aim of this article is to reflect on the design and implementation of a bi/multilingual Bachelor of Education foundation phase programme offered at the University of Fort Hare from 2018. It reviews three major perspectives on bi/multilingualism: mother tongue-based bi/multilingual education, language and decoloniality, and…

The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of a group of South African English Second Language (ESL) Foundation Phase teachers' understanding of, skills in, and training needs to teach phonological awareness (PA) effectively. A qualitative research approach placed within an interpretative paradigm was utilised in two phases.…

African township schools are characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, hence, teachers have the dual task of ensuring that learners grasp scientific concepts, while also catering for the diversity in the learners' backgrounds. The study reported on here was aimed at investigating teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching life sciences…

Background: Despite South Africa's huge investment in professional development, there is not a lot of research that shows that teachers change their teaching practices by attending formal interventions. This article focuses on English as First Additional Language (EFAL) and explores how one Grade 2 teacher changed her practice of oral language…