Bilingual learning materials
for content and language learningin South Africa

Dr Robyn Tyler
16 July 2024
CLIL-ite seminar

The University of the Western Cape
Established 1959

2016, Khayelitsha, Cape Town

South African context• deep racialized inequality that mirrors North-Southglobal inequality 30 years post-democracy• Manifests in/ sustained by untransformed, colonial
schooling system with bimodal achievement
distribution

Time, 2021

‘The only kids who have mother tongue
education from the cradle to the university are
first language English speaking children and very
many first language Afrikaans speaking children,which means that those who were advantaged
before the fall of apartheid are still theadvantaged after the fall of apartheid.’
Neville Alexander, 2004

De/coloniality• Coloniality: ‘that which survives colonialism’(Maldonado-Torres, 2007)• Key site of coloniality is language: ‘In my view
language was the most important vehicle throughwhich that [colonial] power fascinated and held thesoul prisoner. The bullet was the means of thephysical subjugation. Language was the means of thespiritual subjugation’(Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 1986)• The work of decoloniality in language and literacy
education and practices in post-colonial South Africa

Language use in 80% of SA classrooms••••

LiEP 1997: enabling of multilingualism, but…
majority of schools are officially monolingualEnglish LoLT (or Afrikaans) from Year 4Children have learned English as a subject for 2-3
hours per week in Grade 1-3• written texts: monolingual English textbooksand assessments (as well as board notes)• oral discourse: bi/multilingual talk is normative
Emergent bilingual students positioned as deficientmonolinguals – same materials and assessments asEnglish L1 students

Interventions and policy shifts•

Rich decades-long research literature in SA on
covert code-switching, translanguaging andinterventions with teachers (Probyn, Heugh,Alexander, Adendorff, Chick, Makalela, Guzula,
McKinney, Tyler, Madiba etc.)•

Department of Basic Education announcementof the roll-out of Mother Tongue Based
Bilingual Education from 2025

Bilingual
assessment
BilinguallanguagepolicyBilingualpedagogy

BilingualmindsetBilinguallearning
materials

Bilingual
Teacher
education

Holistic and systemic Bilingual Education

• Bilingual materials production (2022)• Trialling in two Cape Town primary schools• (2023-2025): Participatory Action Research• Supporting DBE’s MTBBE roll-out in 2025 andbeyond

Fixed and fluid multilingual text

Early teacher responses

T1 Mr Mohau: because if the learners master, and thenthey are good in English, they understand that means I canuse this one (English) for those ones and then there arethose that are still struggling maybe, I can try to use thatone (bilingual)
T2 RT: ok, Mr Kwezi would you do the same?
T3 Mr Kwezi: I would do the same ja, I can use this one(bilingual) as a low level, if I may put it that way
T4 RT: so Xhosa is the low level hey?
T5 (all laugh)
T6 Mr Kwezi: let’s say that
T7 Ms Azania: slow slow learners

Multilingual text practices

Bilingual text practices

Bilingual writing practices

Bilingual assessment

English only test

Bilingual testBilingual test

English test

86%

51%

Ideological shifts through multilingual text
Nam andifuni nophosisa ndandikwelaqela lotitshala abangayiva ncam lencwadi uqala kwabo ulantuka uqala
kwayo uku introduswa. Kodwa ndithe once ndiyisebenzise eclassini yenze umsebenzi wam walula lencwadi ke
iteach ngeSixhosa kunye nange nange english, yi English kunye nantoni nesiXhosa. So indenze ndibone
abantwana benomdla kakhulu ibenze iinterest abantwana kakhulu ngoba ke omnye umntana ebekwazi
ukuhlala if yi english only.
…once bayibhuda bangabinamdla kwa grade 4 kobanzima ukuya kwezinye iigrade kunye nala science
I don't wanna lie I was also one of the teachers who didn't really understand this book when it was first
introduced. But once I used it in class it made my work really easy for me in class, because it teaches
Science in isiXhosa and English, in English and isiXhosa. So I started seeing my children being moreinterested, they were very interested, because I would see the child is confused when I was teaching in
English only.
…once they lose interest in Grade 4 it will be difficult for them to carry on with science to other grades.

Parent focus group: Ms Azania, Grade 4 Science teacher

Ideological shifts through multilingual text
indenze ento ndanomdla
e-intombi yam ke ngumntu o lastarh (Ms Azania: curious)
ke nawthi nihamba nje ngemoto athi “uyayazi uba sitheni silapha esisihlahla?”ndiphendule athi “hayi tata ayikho njalo, umiss Azania ebethe”
uyakuteach nje always
so bendingayazi kengoku uba ibangelwa yintoni
ndiyifumene kengoku namhlanje ireason yintoni ebangela lanto ithi siyahamba nje uyandifundisa.
this has made me really interested
my daughter is a person who is very forward/annoying (Ms Azania: curious)
even when we're driving she would ask "do you know why this bush is here?"
when I answer she'll say ”no dad it's not like that, Miss Azania said”
so she always teaches you
so I didn't know what was causing that
but today I found out what was the reason of her always teaching me.
Parent focus group: Mr Dube, Grade 4 father

https://bua-lit.org.za/project/isayensi-yethu/
Guzula, X & Tyler, R. (forthcoming) Disrupting coloniality in Southern schooling: A
decolonial lens on languaging in textbooks. In S. Bagga-Gupta (Ed) Palgrave
Handbook of Decolonizing Educational and Language Sciences. Palgrave.
Tyler & McKinney (forthcoming) Crossing the text frontier: Teachers resisting African
language texts for learning. Reading and Writing.

Enkosi!
Dankie!
Arigatō!
Thank you!

Dr Robyn Tyler: rrtyler@uwc.ac.za
www.bua-lit.org.za