M.A. / The movement of former township learners to suburban schools has resulted in more non-native learners taking English as a Home Language (EHL). In some suburban schools, the former township learners are now in the majority, with implications for the conceptualization of EHL as a curriculum option. EHL classrooms in suburban schools with a majority non-native English learner population were investigated for their communicativeness. It might be expected that such classrooms will exhibit an affinity with English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Therefore, ESL classrooms, which have attracted a lot of attention from researchers, were used as a tool in understanding the nature of the said EHL classrooms. Once the data on the communicative orientation of the EHL classrooms were obtained, they were compared to the data from ESL classrooms. There were few significant differences between the EHL classrooms and the ESL ones. The conclusion was that non-native EHL has a lot in common with ESL. The most important difference from the standpoint of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was found to be in the learning content selection, with the EHL settings using more literary works, and so focusing less on the direct teaching of grammatical forms. However, a disturbing pattern was the inability of the learners in the EHL settings and the ESL settings to take full advantage of CLT, which suggests that CLT might not be suitable for learners with rudimentary language skills.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:6747 |
| Date | 08 April 2010 |
| Creators | Moyo, Joseph |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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