Promoting multilingualism: Foundation Phase teachers’ experiences in teaching isiXhosa to native speakers of Afrikaans

Abstract

After 1994, South African policy changes brought about variations in language education resulting in many monolingual classrooms becoming multilingual. Much of the current literature focuses on either providing recommendations to diverse approaches of teaching a second language or describing the experiences of second language learners while limited studies unearthed teachers’ experiences in multilingual classrooms, especially where the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) was Afrikaans. In this article we examine responses of teachers in the Northern Cape to teaching isiXhosa to learners whose mother-tongue is Afrikaans. From an interpretivist lens and using a case study design, we present 6 Afrikaans Foundation Phase teachers’ (FPTs) experiences in teaching isiXhosa as a second First Additional Language (FAL) to non-isiXhosa speakers. Data from in-depth email interviews were coded and thematically analysed. The results from this study show that, while teachers regard multilingualism as fundamental, they equally regard the isiXhosa curriculum as a tool to develop learners’ language proficiency.