The aim of the one-day symposium was to bring together scholars in applied linguistics with an interest in the African languages for the launch of the new AILA Africa regional network. Contributions were in the form of invited research papers from several African countries. This report focuses on the South African contribution, which highlighted…

In orthographies studied to date, children learning to spell tend to omit one consonant of a cluster--for initial clusters, the second consonant, and for medial nasal clusters, the nasal. Explanations have included a special status for the initial consonant of a word, and the fact that in English nasal clusters are not true clusters but consist of…

The central concern of this volume is how to provide quality education to African children, adolescents and adults through the best-suited media and curricular content in order to achieve social cohesion, inclusion and sustainable development. For at least five decades, since the 1953 UNESCO Report "The Use of Vernacular Languages in…

Literacy is perhaps the most fundamental skill required for effective participation in education (formal and non-formal) for national development. At the same time, the choice of language for literacy is a complex issue in multilingual societies like Nigeria. This paper examines the issues involved, namely language policy, language and teacher…

How do teachers define literacy, and how do their perceptions influence their approach to the teaching and learning of literacy? These and other questions relating to literacy generally formed the focus of this ethnographic case study in two urban public primary schools in Ghana. The paper also considers teachers' views on mother tongue literacy.…

This case study examines how a lecturer and a group of students adjust to a request for English-only medium of instruction in tertiary education. The study draws on sociocultural theories considering context and language use as tools for meaning making. Goffman's theories of stage setting and footing are used to analyse how the lecturer positions…

The voices of the main stakeholders in literacy and schooling--pupils and parents--have seldom been given adequate space in studies of school and classroom discourse in sub-Saharan Africa. The present paper attempts to redress this imbalance by presenting the voices of pupils from a multilingual urban primary school in Ghana and of parents from a…

In 1996, the Ministry of Education in Malawi directed that in future Standards 1 to 4 would be taught through mother tongues. It took eight years before the pilot phase of the language policy could begin. The paper critically analyses this situation using Bamgbose's framework which says that, in Africa, language policies tend to follow one or more…

This study investigated degrees of mutual intelligibility among 3 structurally related languages in South Africa: Sepedi, Sesotho, and Setswana. To compare reading proficiency of mother-tongue speakers who enrolled for freshman courses at the University of Limpopo, 4 reading experimental conditions, in the 3 languages and 1 in a harmonized text,…

This paper evaluates a range of factors that have contributed to the limited spread of English to rural Kisii, Kenya, making the presence of English in this non-urban context fall closer to an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Expanding Circle continuum than to the expected English as a Second Language (ESL) context. Kenya is an Outer Circle…

This article aims at contributing to the ongoing discussion about how bilingualism is understood in the current National Bilingualism Plan (PNB for its initials in Spanish). Based on previous research and discussions held at academic events, it is evident that the promoters of the PNB use the term "bilingualism" in a rather…

Power can be equated to the possession of a particular language used to navigate the world. In Mali and Burkina Faso, two former colonies of France, language choice for instruction in mainstream primary schools remains a struggle between the powerful and the powerless. Fifty years after independence from France, both countries continue to…

Language policies in South African education have historically been inextricably woven within the fabric of larger sociopolitical realities and have supported the interests of those in power. With the dismantling of the apartheid regime and subsequent Constitutional statements addressing the importance of promoting the status and use of indigenous…

South African universities are required by the Language Policy for Higher Education adopted by the government on 6 November 2002 to implement multilingualism in their learning and teaching programmes. Multilingualism is recommended in this policy as a means to ensure equity of access and success in higher education, in contrast to past colonial…

Comparative research in multilingual urban primary schools indicates that the pedagogical and political goals of schooling may operate at cross-purposes. Classroom observations and teacher interview-discussions were conducted in classes for immigrant children in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the language of instruction is French, and in classes…