Evaluación del proyecto

“It makes immediate sense that learners whose main language is not the LoLT should draw on their main language(s) in the learning process. However, it is often that which makes most sense that is most elusive to critical interrogation.”

(Setati and Adler, 2000: 244).

In South Africa a counterintuitive phenomenon exists wherein the vast majority of learners’ LoLT is their L2. Despite this, there has been very little academic documentation of how LoLT affects learners’ cognition (Blyund and Athanasopoulos, 2014: 438). Titone (1978: 287) notes that there are many areas for which research is needed in order to better develop bilingual, and by extension multilingual, education. The term bilingual refers to the use of two languages, while the term multilingual refers to the use of three or more languages. He suggests that research should seek to find the different benefits of language instruction compared to teaching other subjects through the target language, and that multilingual education should not simply imply the use of different languages as LoLT, but should also emphasise the use of language for cognitive activity (Titone, 1978: 287).

This research aims to investigate how bilingual videos are being used with Grade 7 learners at OLICO Youth, an after-school mathematics support programme in Diepsloot, Johannesburg. This chapter will provide insight into the need for and efficacy of bilingual videos as a teaching tool for Grade 7 mathematics. This will be done by first outlining the state of education in South Africa, with special attention paid to mathematics achievement, literacy levels, and attitudes towards English as LoLT and the use of the L1 in the classroom. This examination will be furthered to look at the socio-cultural and socio-economic

implications of language proficiency which transcend one’s school years. Thereafter the processes of acquiring a second language will be discussed, focusing on the development of BICS and CALP, and the relationship between home language proficiency and second language acquisition. Thereafter the intricacies of learning through a language other than one’s own will be examined, with special attention paid to learning mathematics through English in South Africa. Once this has been examined different models of teaching will be introduced, including models which incorporate computer-based learning, paying attention to the suitability of these models to the South African mathematics education context.

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Thereafter codeswitching will be explained, with specific reference to translanguaging and its current and possible uses in South African education. Following the above explanations and discussions it will be concluded that an intervention using translanguaging in a multimedia format is a suitable intervention in the context of South African mathematics education.

A learner’s development of multilingualism can be affected by a number of factors, including parents’, teachers’, and the community’s attitudes, and the prestige, function, and prevalence of the languages in the learner’s contexts (Baker and Hornberger, 2001: 38). Learners living in urban areas are generally exposed to significantly more English than learners living outside of these areas and as a result have higher English proficiencies (Soudien in Probyn, 2009: 127), although this proficiency is often a far cry from the proficiency needed to successfully cope with English as a LoLT (Heugh, 2013: 224). As a result of the status of English in South Africa, English proficiency is in large part replacing race as the litmus test of social class (Soudien in Probyn, 2009: 127).

It is often made to appear as though multilingual learners in South Africa tend to perform more poorly than their monolingual peers, as has been claimed by some authors (see Reynold and Saer in Setati and Adler, 2000: 244). However, this difference in performance can and should be attributed more to other influential factors than the learners’

multilingualism, such as socio-economic status and parents’ levels of education, bearing in mind that the majority of multilingual learners in South Africa are children of parents who were not afforded quality education under the apartheid regime. Research has shown that multilingualism can positively influence learners’ cognitive development, for example that of Iaco-Worrall, Ben-Zeef, Bialystock, Doyle, and Pearl and Lambert (Setati and Adler, 2000: 245), and the ways in which this is achieved will be discussed further below. As such it is important that learners’ academic performance notes their language abilities, but is not viewed separately from their surrounding environments or “the wider social, cultural, and political factors” (Setati, 2002: 13).

Peal and Lambert (in Baker and Hornberger, 2001: 33) suggest the use of socio- economic status, sex, and age as variables that should be matched in order to ensure a more accurate comparison of learners’ language abilities. However, this is particularly difficult in South Africa, as a large number of bilingual learners have different socio-economic status to monolinguals. It should be noted that the demographic of learners disadvantaged by the use of a non-mother tongue LoLT is the same demographic as those disadvantaged by Bantu education (Webb, Lafon, and Pare, 2010: 280). Without provisions made for this

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and as such the socio-economic segregation of apartheid will be – and is being – perpetuated (Webb, Lafon, and Pare, 2010: 280).

When considering the literature, four clear themes emerged. The overarching theme is the socio-political context of South Africa, which informs the educational landscape and how learners interact with it. Two subsidiary themes are the linguistic and mathematical contexts, which both draw from and contribute to the socio-political context. All three of these themes then inform the personal context, which is considerably more difficult to document, and which focuses on how learners situate themselves within these different contexts. Within these themes are significant sub-themes, which are often in conflict each other. Within the socio-political theme, the utility or prestige of a language often conflicts with the culture and heritage attached to it. Within the linguistic theme, a tension that is very often experienced by teachers and learners is that between using a language necessitated by policy and one

necessitated by learners’ understandings, or lack thereof. Within the mathematics theme a tension exists between conceptual development and making sure learners understand what they are doing, and procedural fluency which ensures learners know how to do something. The personal theme does not host tensions as significant as the other themes, but rather exists as a culmination of all these themes. These four themes thus create an analytical framework informed by the literature in this chapter. The themes are illustrated on the following page.

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