M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Despite a worldwide drive to eradicate illiteracy, the numbers of illiterates are still soaring. Southern Africa is no exception to this. Even though statistics regarding illiteracy may be misleading, there are an estimated 400 000 illiterate mother tongue speakers of Afrikaans in South Africa. This study tries to establish the reasons for this situation within a historical-political framework. It further provides a sociocognitive basis for mother tongue literacy teaching, relying on the discipline of sociolinguistics. Literacy skills form part of the language user's communicative competence; this study, therefore, endeavours to situate literacy teaching within the communicative approach to language teaching with its emphasis on the needs of the language learner, the functionality of the acquired skills and the active participation of the language learner in the teaching activities. From this perspective a selection of literacy material in Afrikaans, representative of both the mainstream "establishment" type and the more "radical" school, is discussed to arrive at a theoretical and practical rationale for the teaching of literacy to Afrikaans mother tongue speakers, stripped of political undertones which so often direct literacy programmes. The main critique on Afrikaans literacy material is that it is either too behaviouristically structured or that no planned progressive structuring has been built into the courses. Both types of material can lead to dissatisfaction amongst literacy students if the respective course does not fulfil their need for literacy. This situation is often the result of an incomplete needs analysis and the creation of literacy material without a clear image of the target group. The unstructured manner in which literacy material is created and distributed is due to the lack of a national literacy strategy, as well as the nature of adult literacy teaching where specific needs of specific groups of illiterates dictate the type of material. A way of counteracting these problems would be to establish a national organisation to coordinate, amongst others, the development and distribution of literacy material. In this material the needs of the learner will be in a central position with the interaction between the learner and the teacher taking place in meaningful contexts. A thorough knowledge of andragogy and applied linguistics can therefore help to develop literacy material that will benefit Afrikaans illiterates, be they mother tongue speakers of the language or second language users who need to be literate in Afrikaans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:12204 |
| Date | 03 September 2014 |
| Creators | Odendaal, Adriaan Izak |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Johannesburg |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds