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published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis (M.A. (Translation Studies and Linguistics)) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / Refer to the document

This thesis has studied the attitudes of high school and college newspaper advisers and high school newspaper editors concerning their approach to language usage that would be appropriate in a student newspaper. In order to discover these attitudes, a questionnaire on language usage was sent to 225 school journalists (75 to each group) with an enclosed stamped self-addressed envelope which allowed the form to be returned. The returns netted 149 questionnaires (49 from each of the adviser groups and 51 from the editors). It was found that the school journalists were much more conservative toward acceptance of language usage than published linguistic data had suggested likely. Also it was found that the student editors were much less liberal than the two groups of advisers had suspected they would be. The three groups contradicted themselves to a certain degree in their negative reactions to certain rules of usage and their positive reactions to certain specific grammatical examples illustrating the rules of usage.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the reading comprehension of deaf and hearing subjects was affected by the presence of idiomatic language in passages.The Test Of Idioms was constructed to determine the effect of idiomatic language on reading comprehension. It consisted of twelve passages. The four forms differed in the presence or absence of idiomatic language. The Test Of Idioms was evaluated by three judges. Form A and Form D were piloted to standardize the directions for administration and to assess the reliability of the instrument. The reliability for Form A was .93 and .89 for Form D.The subjects in this study were 54 students at the Indiana School for the Deaf who were prelingually, profoundly deaf and had no other handicapping conditions. The hearing subjects consisted of 91 students from the New Castle Community School System who were in grades three or four, had never been retained and had no handicapping conditions. Both deaf and hearing subjects were randomly assigned to take one of the four forms of the Test Of Idioms.The following results were obtained. The deaf subjects did not differ significantly across groups in their ability to comprehend passages with varying levels of idiomatic language. The hearing subjects did not differ significantly across groups in their ability to comprehend passages containing varying levels of idiomatic language. In addition, within groups the deaf and hearing subjects did not differ in their comprehension of passages as a function of the ability or inability to define the idioms contained in the passages.The findings of the study were interpreted to mean that when idioms are embedded in passages where sufficient contextual support is available and extraneous factors are controlled, comprehension is not impaired for deaf or hearing subjects. In addition ability to define an idiom is not an accurate predictor of comprehension ability for reading materials containing idiomatic language.

The dawn of democracy in South Africa led to the development of Language in Education Policy (LiEP) as one of the pieces of legislations that promote languages in schools where parents, learners, who have come of age may choose a language for instruction. LiEP, together with the Constitution of South Africa, promote equal value of all eleven official languages spoken in this country. The promotion of language policies clearly shows that language is the bedrock of the academic development of every child. Unfortunately, Spaull, Van der Berg, Wills, Gustafsson and Kotzè (2016) found that South African Foundation Phase learners lack the most basic skill needed for academic achievement, reading for meaning. Spaull et.al (2016) findings show that language problems start during the early years of schooling. This study aimed at finding out the perceptions of school stakeholders about the use of English as LoLT in Grade 9 Social Sciences, and it is located in the Interpretivist Paradigm. In this study, stakeholders are learners because they are central to learning, parents, as they have the responsibility of choosing LoLT for their children and assist them in their schooling career. Lastly, teachers are stakeholders because of their critical role of imparting knowledge and skills during classroom interaction. The researcher uses a Qualitative approach to identify data-collecting tools suitable for this research, and chooses semi-structured interviews and observations. Semi-structured interviews are flexible and allow deeper probing during the interview. The sample consists of nine Grade 9 learners, three teachers of Grade 9 Social Sciences and six parents from the School Governing Body (SGB). The aim of conducting observations was to find out the language used by learners and teachers during classroom interaction. This study found out that most participants prefer learning Social Sciences in English than in isiXhosa. They are aware of the challenges experienced in the classroom when learning in English but they still choose it. From the sample used, participants clearly indicate that learning in English causes some barriers in the learning and teaching process. However, it also became clear that the benefits associated with learning in English make it difficult to put it at the same level as other languages and participants do not link mother tongue to career opportunities. It is also evident that English will enjoy its hegemony until such time that all stakeholders in Education view the mother tongue as a foundation for learning other languages and as a resource as well so that they can use it in the classroom to understand the content. Policy developers must look deeply into the question of LoLT so that learners receive instruction in a language that will assist them in improved academic performance. Teachers must be equipped with adequate skills to assist learners in developing reading and comprehension skills in the classroom. There is a dire need to develop the culture of reading in rural school learners; and teachers must expose learners to a variety of English reading material.

In South Africa, there is concern about the poor achievement by first additional language (FAL) English learners in mathematics, and this is a consequence not solely of the apartheid era but more appropriately, the existing current situation in the classroom. Since 2006, the Department of Basic Education in South Africa introduced mathematical literacy (ML) as another learning area for the Further Education and Training (FET) band. ML, as an alternative choice to mathematics, is envisaged as a key to the understanding of our everyday world filled with numbers. Mathematical literacy FAL English learners and teachers are exposed to a ML curriculum that demands high linguistic skills in English in order to engage with the mathematical concepts through the medium of English which is not their home language. While the Language-in-Education Policy (DoE, 1997) recommends that school language policies promote additive bilingualism and the use of learners’ home languages as languages of learning and teaching (LoLT), there has been little implementation of these recommendations by schools, for the reason that all assessments and learner and teacher support materials (LTSM) are only available in English. Thus it appears that ML creates a language gap when FAL English learners and teachers have to possess a high level of communication and language proficiency of the LoLT English to successfully engage with the mathematical context and content of the ML curriculum since the language itself carries all the meaning. The majority of FAL English learners and teachers struggle with the necessary English language proficiency to successfully interact with the ML curriculum and are often required to use their own home language (code switching) to bring about understanding. In this study, I explore how teachers and learners who are dominantly FAL English speakers, engage in teaching and learning of ML in bi/multilingual classrooms. The main aim of the study is to investigate the FAL English learners’ and teachers’ experiences and perceptions concerning the use of English as the LoLT in bi/multilingual ML classrooms. Qualitative measures were generated through personal interviews (teachers [n=15] and learners [n=25]) from five different secondary schools situated in the rural areas of the Midlands in KwaZulu-Natal. This study is framed by Wenger’s (1991) model of situated learning and Vygotsky’s socio-cultural perspectives, which propose that learning involves a process of engagement in a community of practice and reflects the learners’ sociocultural relationship to school mathematics respectively. The study also describes Cummins’ quadrants and explores the benefits of Cummins’ notion of language use (Cummins, 1984). Analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed that, despite both teachers’ and learners’ difficulty with the language, English is the more popular language to be used in teaching and learning in bi/multilingual mathematical literacy classrooms since English is accepted as a global language. Worldwide emphasis and dominance of English as a powerful language that gives access to goods and social mobility were also highlighted. However, overall results in this study showed that most participants did express their preference for using their home language isiZulu alongside English through the extensive practice of code switching for the teaching and learning of ML.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts