The Language-in-Education Policy in South Africa: A gap between policy and efficacy

DOI

10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.321How to use a DOI?

Keywords

language in education policy; apartheid era; bilingualism; African languages

Abstract

Language in education policy plays a significant role in teaching and learning language, and thus it has been a major issue of research in language in education policy. South Africa is one of the countries that has become a center of discussion in language in education policy issues for its unique multicultural and historical account that are of a major influence in shaping the country’s language in education policy as it is today. This article provides an account of the implementation of the language in education policy in South Africa particularly the extent to which the policy promote the native African languages, as the oppressed ones during the apartheid era, to be used in educational context. It sets forth the issues of historical and multilingual situation in South Africa, and against these backdrops the implementation of the language policy in education in South Africa is discussed. It was revealed that there was a gap between the policy and its efficacy. Prior to 1994 the official languages in South Africa is English and Afrikaans. While the majority of African speak the African languages, some other speak indigenous languages. After the demise of apartheid, the new government declared the 11 languages as the official language including Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. However, in effect English remain the dominant language although the language in education policy have enforced the Constitution to promote additive bilingualism and the use of learners’ native language as a language of learning and teaching. In addition, the status of English an international language may attract parents to enroll their children to English language schools instead of African language school despite the fact that the majority of learners do not have sufficient English language proficiency to engage in the teaching and learning process.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sidik Indra Nugraha
PY  - 2019/06
DA  - 2019/06
TI  - The Language-in-Education Policy in South Africa: A gap between policy and efficacy
BT  - Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 568
EP  - 572
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.321
DO  - 10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.321
ID  - Nugraha2019/06
ER  -