Liesel Hibbert - Böcker

Hibbert explores South Africa’s higher education crisis utilising case studies and first-hand experiences with English as the language of instruction. The historical overview provides a framework with which to understand the complicated nature of using English as a language of instruction in South Africa, past and present. Student narratives are presented to illustrate mainly breakthroughs, but also challenges. An overview is provided, of imported English teaching methodologies and how they have emerged and developed in the local educational system over decades. It is demonstrated how these methodologies relate to socio-economic and political events and trends at each juncture. By applying defamiliarisation as a research method of investigation, students’ translanguaging struggles are recorded and discussed, both pre-pandemic and in the pandemic period. The experiences of non-monolingual English-speaking staff and students, and of local English/African language bilinguals is foregrounded, as they are by far the majority in South African higher education and schools. The relevance of the experiences and learning paths of those staff and students is enhanced. This book aids lecturers across disciplines and English language facilitators in the improvement of English acquisition curricula through exposure to arguments, case studies and learning path narratives in this volume, and prompts and inspires researchers to develop further theories and experiments in their own context.

Hibbert explores South Africa’s higher education crisis utilising case studies and first-hand experiences with English as the language of instruction. The historical overview provides a framework with which to understand the complicated nature of using English as a language of instruction in South Africa, past and present. Student narratives are presented to illustrate mainly breakthroughs, but also challenges. An overview is provided, of imported English teaching methodologies and how they have emerged and developed in the local educational system over decades. It is demonstrated how these methodologies relate to socio-economic and political events and trends at each juncture. By applying defamiliarisation as a research method of investigation, students’ translanguaging struggles are recorded and discussed, both pre-pandemic and in the pandemic period. The experiences of non-monolingual English-speaking staff and students, and of local English/African language bilinguals is foregrounded, as they are by far the majority in South African higher education and schools. The relevance of the experiences and learning paths of those staff and students is enhanced. This book aids lecturers across disciplines and English language facilitators in the improvement of English acquisition curricula through exposure to arguments, case studies and learning path narratives in this volume, and prompts and inspires researchers to develop further theories and experiments in their own context.

Focusing on the use of African languages in higher education, this book showcases South African higher education practitioners’ attempts to promote a multilingual ethos in their classes. It is a first-time overview of multilingual teaching and learning strategies that have been tried and tested in a number of higher education institutions in South Africa. Despite language-in-education policies that extol the virtues of multilingualism, practice remains oriented towards English-only learning and teaching. In the multilingual contexts of local campuses, this book shows how students and lecturers attempt to understand their multiple identities and use the available languages to create multilingual learning environments.

Focusing on the use of African languages in higher education, this book showcases South African higher education practitioners’ attempts to promote a multilingual ethos in their classes. It is a first-time overview of multilingual teaching and learning strategies that have been tried and tested in a number of higher education institutions in South Africa. Despite language-in-education policies that extol the virtues of multilingualism, practice remains oriented towards English-only learning and teaching. In the multilingual contexts of local campuses, this book shows how students and lecturers attempt to understand their multiple identities and use the available languages to create multilingual learning environments.

The appointment of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994 signalled the end of apartheid and transition to a new democratic constitution. This book studies discursive trends during the first twenty years of the new democracy, outlining the highlights and challenges of transforming policy, practice and discursive formations. The book analyses a range of discourses which signal how and by what processes the linguistic landscape and identities of South Africa’s inhabitants have changed in this time, finding that struggles in South African politics go hand in hand with shifts in the linguistic landscape. In a country now characterised by multilingualism, heteroglossia, polyphony and translanguaging, the author debates where the discourse practices of those born post-1994 may lead.