© Kamla-Raj 2015 Int J Edu Sci, 8(3): 655-664 (2015)

Home Language and the Language of Learning and Teachingin Mathematics Classrooms

Percy Sepeng

University of South Africa, College of Education, Department of Mathematics Education,Box 392, UNISA, 0003, South Africa

E-mail: sepenp@unisa.ac.za

KEYWORDS Home Language. Learning. Teaching. Mathematics. Response

ABSTRACT Second language (English) learning of mathematics is common in South African mathematicsclassrooms, including those in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa where isiXhosa speakers are taught in thelanguage that is not spoken at home by both teachers and learners. The purpose of the present research is toinvestigate issues of language, both home (isiXhosa) and the language of learning and teaching (English) inmultilingual mathematics classroom settings. The semi-structured face-to-face teachers’ interviews generatedqualitative measures. The interviews with four teachers in four schools were aimed at understanding their perceptionsabout the use of languages in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Teachers’ responses indicated that they arefaced with a complex situation of using English and isiXhosa in a dual role when teaching mathematics to reap somebenefits (if there exist any) that come with such a pedagogical approach in the mathematics classroom. In addition,it appeared that teachers perceive the use of languages in the classrooms were generously influenced in absentia bythe Language in Education Policy that was introduced to schools for implementation prior to the curriculumreform in post-apartheid South Africa, which is not easily accessible and understood by the teachers.

INTRODUCTION

In South Africa, prior to Nationalist Rule in1948, there was a relatively loose policy of ‘moth-er tongue instruction’ which varied from prov-ince to province (Hartshorne 1992). After theNationalist Government took over power in 1948,legislation was passed and the resources nec-essary to establish Afrikaans alongside Englishas a fully-fledged official language of teachingand learning (LoLT) in South African schoolswere extended (Adler 2001). All learners in mi-nority, white, coloured and Indian schools wererequired to take both Afrikaans and Englishthroughout the basic education of their school-ing, one language spoken at home as first lan-guage, and the other either at first or secondlanguage level.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 changedthe language policy in South African schoolswhich fell under the government’s segregatedDepartment of Education and Training schools(that is, schools for Black children) to extend theuse of mother tongue and Afrikaans. By 1959 alleight years of primary education were done inmother tongue and secondary education usedEnglish and Afrikaans for instruction in a ratioof 50:50 in these schools. To implement this newpolicy all teachers in Black schools were given

five years to become competent in Afrikaans viathe intensive in-service Afrikaans languagecourses that were offered by the government(Hartshorne 1992). This official language-in-ed-ucation policy (LiEP) was specifically and ex-plicitly designed to serve the apartheid state,but it met with fierce resistance culminating inthe 1976 Soweto Revolt (Kane-Berman 1978).

The new South African constitution adopt-ed in 1996 for a democratic South Africa hasgiven the country eleven official languages, withnine African languages (Setswana, Sepedi, Se-sotho, Tshivenda, siSwati, Xitsonga, isiNdebele,isiZulu and isiXhosa) being added to Englishand Afrikaans, the only two languages that wereempowered with official status during the apart-heid period. The constitution encourages thegovernment of the day to take practical and pos-itive measures to elevate the status and advancethe use of indigenous languages that were pre-viously disadvantaged and marginalised by theapartheid government (Constitution of the Re-public of South Africa 1996). The constitutionstates that everyone has a right to receive edu-cation in the official language/languages of theirchoice in public educational institutions wherepracticable and multilingualism has been giveneducational weight by the South African

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Schools’ Act (SASA) which promotes on-goingLiEP initiatives (Adler 2001).

Language of Learning and Teaching:Colonial vs. Home Language

As investigated earlier, the importance of lan-guage in learning (Secada 1992) and the mediat-ing role of language in meaning making and in-structional practice (Lerman 2001) have been thefocus of significant research during the past fewdecades. There are on-going debates amongscholars on the appropriate language to be usedas LoLT, and the implications or gains of usingcolonial languages (for example, English inSouth Africa) or language(s) used by learners athome (for example, isiXhosa). Chitera (2009) ex-plored that, some are in favour of colonial lan-guages; others prefer use of home languages.She argues that the use of colonial languages isperceived to offer more benefits for the learnersbecause these languages are commonly usedwidely elsewhere in the world. In addition, theselanguages are seen as a symbol of power, sta-tus, prestige and access to social goods (Setati2005a).

Other researchers (Setati et al. 2008) calledfor pedagogical strategy that employs the useof learners’ home languages deliberately andtransparently (or invisibly) to solve real-worldmathematics problems in primary classrooms ofSouth Africa. They argue for the increased useof the learners’ home language, along with useof English, through dialogue and discussion inorder for learners to acquire mathematical rea-soning skills.

Teachers’ and Learners’ Perceptions:English vs. isiXhosa

Studies (for example, Barkhuizen 2002; Webb2010) conducted amongst isiXhosa first lan-guage learners throughout the Eastern and West-ern Cape provinces reported that most of thelearners articulated the belief that speakers ofAfrican languages, such as IsiXhosa, do notneed to study their home languages becausethey know speaking the language already. InSouth Africa, the newly democratic elected gov-ernment, through the LiEP policy, promotes mul-tilingualism by allowing the schools to use more

than one language of learning and teaching(Setati et al. 2002). In reality, the LiEP has metsignificant field constraints. Taylor and Vinjevold(1999) illustrated that most schools are not opt-ing for home languages as LoLT policy and prac-tice, and that there is a consequent increase inEnglish language instruction and decrease inprimary language instruction in South Africanclassrooms.

Implications of Language-in-EducationPolicy on the Teaching and LearningMathematics

It is also widely acknowledged that educa-tion policies and language-in-education policiesare determined by economic interests and polit-ical ideologies (Taylor and Vinjevold 1999). TheLiEP in South Africa implies that mathematicsteachers and learners have to negotiate, agree,and decide which language to use, how andwhen to use it, in the teaching and learning ofmathematics in multilingual classrooms. In pre-viously marginalised schools of South Africa,mathematics teachers may prefer to use English,which is the learners’ second language, butwhich they believe provides learners access topower, social goods and prepares them for ter-tiary education (Setati 2005a).

Adler (2001) researched out that, learnerswhose language of learning and teaching is nottheir home language tend to communicate in theirhome language when solving group mathemat-ics tasks in multilingual classrooms. In theseclassroom settings, teachers have to make a de-cision whether to promote code-switching be-tween the two languages with the purpose ofdeveloping meaning or just to disregard the LiEP,and continue to use English only as LoLT.Setati’s (2005b) study in multilingual classroomsof South Africa reveals that teachers are moreconcerned with providing the best instructionpossible that will give learners access to socialclass, power, higher education and employment.She argues that mathematics teachers feel guiltyto code-switch as a teaching strategy because itmay deprive their learners of an opportunity toacquire proficiency in English. Therefore, math-ematics teachers may be faced with the chal-lenges of disregarding and relegating the LoLTas defined in the LiEP, and rather use whateverthey deem to be helpful to their learners.

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Objectives of the Study

The study endeavours to explore issues ofboth home language and the language of teach-ing and learning that come to play in the teach-ing and learning of mathematics. The researcherwanted to understand why teachers preferred acertain language practice over the other to sup-port classroom discourse(s). Further, the studywanted to establish which language (English orisiXhosa) they preferred to teach mathematics,and to engage learners in classroom interactions,and why.

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

Denzin and Lincoln (2003) submitted that, aresearch design is a plan that indicates how theresearcher intends to investigate the researchproblem. The study that is reported in this paperused a pre-test–intervention–post-test design.To meet the purposes of the paper, it was inves-tigated that, what the situation was in terms oflanguage uses when teaching Mathematics aswell as how participating teachers’ perceived theroles of language(s) as a recourse and/or tool toenhance learners’ understanding of conceptstaught in multilingual classrooms. Therefore,open-ended interviews were conducted in orderto make sense of issues of language(s) in theseclassrooms.

The Instrument

The interview questions were based on is-sues of language (home and/or language oflearning and teaching) use in the teaching andlearning of Mathematics. The questions probedteachers’ perception on roles of language useas a pedagogical tool in multilingual classroomsettings. The issues of the language of learningand teaching and language spoken at home,addressed in this study, formed the basis of theresearch questions and sub-questions (Creswelland Plano Clark 2007). The open-ended inter-view questions were also used to measure theextent at which the language policy in theirschools influences their current practice regard-ing the use of languages in their multilingualmathematics classes. All four teachers wereasked the same questions in the same order. In-

terview questions were in English, but inter-viewees were free to use language of their choice.These data gave insight into the use of languageand strategies that are employed in the teachingof real word problem-solving.

The reasons that were provided by the fourteachers on their personal language preferenc-es and/or choices, and perceptions about theuse of languages in the teaching and learning ofmathematics were analysed qualitatively.

Sample

The main aim of the sampling in the studyreported here was, among others, to select pos-sible research participants because they pos-sessed characteristics, roles, opinions, knowl-edge, ideas or experiences that may be particu-larly relevant to the research (Gibson and Brown2009). The sample consisted of four purposive-ly selected mathematics teachers in four town-ship junior secondary schools. The four schoolschosen were a convenience sample of a clusterof similar schools in Port Elizabeth. All theschools are situated in the Nelson MandelaMetropole and are functional (as opposed todysfunctional – which is the case in many in-stances in South Africa), have similar character-istics in their approach to teaching and learningcontexts and are public and previously margina-lised schools. The schools draw learners fromlow economic status. isiXhosa is the languagethat they use at home and when they play andcommunicate informally at school.

Ethical Issues

The study reported in this paper requestedand secured an informed consent from the fourteachers participated in the interview sessionafter prior permission to conduct research, wasgranted by the Education, Research Technolo-gy and Innovation Committee (ERTIC) of theNelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Afterthe ethics clearance was approved and award-ed, the principals and key teachers of the partic-ipating schools were approached, where theirroles as participants, rights to choose to partic-ipate or not to participate in this study were ex-plained to them. The participants in the studyreported in this paper were assured of confiden-tiality and that participation was voluntary, andgiven a guarantee that they could withdraw from

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the study at any time and that no personal de-tails would be disclosed. Confidentiality of allthe information collected in the schools was alsoensured, and that no portion of the data collect-ed, whatsoever, would be used for any purposeother than this research.

RESULTS

Few extracts are used as examples from teach-er interviews, and are presented below. All thenames of teachers and schools in these extractsare pseudonyms and transcriptions were notedited.

Transcript 1: Which language(s) do you use tosupport communication in your classroom andwhy?

Extract 1.1

Teacher A: Normally when I’m teachingmathematics I’m using Englishbecause I want my learners toget used in the questions for En-glish, because maybe during theexam time they will not be askedby me, they will be asked by some-body else, so I want them to getused , using the language even ifI’m teaching mathematics.... Theproblem that I am having is totranslate the words from Englishto Xhosa [meaning isiXhosa],because usually we are using al-phabets... so it will be difficult toteach in Xhosa.

Teacher A is a first isiXhosa speaker usingEnglish to support communication in his class-room. He prefers to use English because it is thelanguage of assessment, and he portrays learn-ers’ home language as a ‘difficult’ subject to usefor teaching in his classroom. The teacher’s useof first personal pronoun “I” suggest his ownidentity and positioning as a mathematics teach-er and the expected role he plays in his class-room. He did not mention the implication(s) ofusing English on his learners and their positionsin this regard. The observations also revealedthat Teacher A and the learners held differentpositions resulting in different identities. Thisbecame clear when he said, “The problem is totranslate words from English to isiXhosa”, and

without mentioning if his learners had the sameproblem of translating between the two languag-es. The following extract indicates that TeacherB exercised the same choice of language use butoffered different reasons for her choice.

Extract 1.2

Teacher B: Basically I use English...[pauses]Researcher: Why?Teacher B: Firstly I’m not isiXhosa speak-

ing, so I rather refer to the lan-guage that I can speak fluent-ly... I don’t really face problemsbecause at least I understandthe language, so I don’t have aproblem; I even give them theliberty to speak in isiXhosawhen they are in class, becausethe most important idea is forthem to understand rather thanto speak the language on itsown.

The teacher’s preferred language for conver-sation in her classroom is English because “Iam not isiXhosa speaker” and can easily referto the language that she can speak fluently. Whileexplaining reasons for her preferred language ofcommunication in her classroom, Teacher B usedthe first personal pronouns “I”, “them” andthen “they”. The use of these pronouns sug-gested the identities and positioning of boththe teacher and the learners, and their expectedand negotiated roles filled by each party accord-ing to their positions. In Extract 9, the way“them” is used identifies learners as the key el-ement of her classroom, holding almost the sameposition within classroom discourse. This wasalso confirmed during observations of her class-room, where she frequently used learners’ homelanguage as an invisible resource through peer-to-peer translations of mathematical terms, andre-voicing as a strategy to re-phrase and re-worddifficult mathematical concepts.

Extract 1.3

Teacher C: I use their mother tongue whichis isiXhosa; because sometimesyou could continue in Englishand you discover later that theyreally did not understand whatyou actual wanted to put through,

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so it’s easier for them some-times when you explain in theirmother tongue.

Teacher D: I’m using isiXhosa and English,but if I want to emphasize I useisiXhosa... Mostly I use isiX-hosa. I think my learners don’tunderstand me, so I prefer touse isiXhosa, the language theyare using at home...., but we areusing English books.

Researcher: OKTeacher D: Using isiXhosa for teaching and

English for assessment worksjust fine because I use factor-ization, expression, and mono-mial because I don’t know thesewords in isiXhosa, so I usethose terms.

Teachers C and D used the learners’ homelanguage for most of the classroom interactions,including teaching and learning activities. Theteachers’ choice of language seemed to be influ-enced by her learners’ linguistic competences.Teacher D’s belief that “I think my learners don’tunderstand me, so I prefer to use isiXhosa, thelanguage they are using at home” and TeacherC’s notion that “You could continue in Englishand you discover later that they really did notunderstand what you actually wanted to putthrough” suggest that these teachers prefer isiX-hosa to communicate in the classroom. TeacherD also uses code-switching as a strategy to en-gage learners in classroom discourse. In herclassroom practice, she regards English as a lan-guage of assessment and for using in learnerand teacher support materials, but not neces-sarily for teaching and learning.

Transcript 2: Which language do you prefer touse when clarifying concepts that are beingtaught in the classroom? Why?

Extract 2.1

Teacher A: Sometimes not most of the time,just for few seconds I translatewhen I want to emphasise some-thing, I can translate the Englishword into Xhosa, so that theycan be able to grasp what I’mteaching to them.

Researcher: Do you switch between the twolanguages?

Teacher A: Yes, but in Xhosa I am justteaching it for few seconds, butmainly I use English. Sometimesif I am using too much English, Iwill find that, I can see my learn-ers, you can see them that theydo not understand this thing, letme use their language. You findthat when I am using their lan-guage they understand me, butI like to teach mostly in English

Teacher B: I wish I could speak isiXhosasometimes, because the thingsthat you really want to explainbut you can’t really get to thepoint, so I wish I could speakisiXhosa then I would use bothlanguages.... I use English andsupport it in isiXhosa, what Iactually do is: when I teach aconcept, obviously in everyclass there are learners that arefluent in English and who arefast learners, so they are sort ofmy assistants, because when Iexplain if they get the conceptthen I will ask them to teach orsay it the way they understandand by so doing everyone getsit, but of course we’ve got thefew that might remain behind.

Extracts 2.1, present two responses of teach-ers about their preferred language used for clar-ifying concepts in the classroom. Teachers Aand B agree that using only one language is notsufficient when explaining concepts that arebeing taught and learned. For example, TeacherB used the language of learners and learnersthemselves as “my assistants” to explain andtranslate English words to isiXhosa. She en-gaged learners in such a way that opportunitiesto negotiate rules of engagement during mathe-matical discourse in the classroom were created.Teacher A mostly used English to unpack andexplain concepts during his lessons. However,he acknowledged that “when I am using theirlanguage they understand me, but I like to teachmostly in English”. He preferred English overthe language he claimed produced better under-standing of concepts being taught. The frequentuse of personal pronoun “I” suggested thatTeacher A holds position of power and authori-ty on how learners should learn mathematics.

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Extract 2.2

Teacher C: It should be English, but as Ihave mentioned before, I pre-fer to use isiXhosa as theselearners are very weak in En-glish... so to put it across inisiXhosa makes things easy forthem.

Teacher D: isiXhosaOn the other hand, Teacher Cand D prefer using isiXhosawhen clarifying mathematicalconcepts that are being taughtin the classroom. In Extract 2.2,Teacher C acknowledges thatalthough English is the LoLTin his school, “I prefer to useisiXhosa”. He uses learners’home language as a strategyto simplify the mathematicalcontent being learned, because“to put it across in isiXhosamakes things easy for them”.The following transcript, Tran-script 3, addresses teachers’views on the language usedduring word problem-solving.

Transcript 3: Which language do learners useas a resource in order to understand word prob-lem solving? Why?

Extract 3.1

Teacher A: The learners are using Xhosa,sometimes I ask them in En-glish but they will answer mein Xhosa, but what is happen-ing is that I always encouragemy learners to speak, even ifyou speak Xhosa, I accept thatbecause I’m encouraging mylearners to participate that isthe most important thing, sothat if they are wrong I can cor-rect them or if they are wrong Ican guide them, that is what Inormally preach to them, thatis the way of encouraging themto participate because youwon’t know Mathematics if youjust fold your hands, but if you

are speaking it or writing some-thing on the chalkboard or youare writing something on apiece of paper that is what I likefrom my learners.

Researcher: Are they [learners] scared touse their home language (isiX-hosa)?

Teacher A: No they are not afraid becauseI say to them as long you arespeaking in my class you canuse any language and then Iwill correct you if you arewrong, that is what I’m preach-ing with my learners.

Extract 3.2

Teacher B: I think basically they are usingisiXhosa and it’s all because oftheir background, they arespeaking isiXhosa all over ex-cept in class. They only speakEnglish in class and I’ve notedthat even in the English lessonsthey are having a problem be-cause they sometimes referthings in isiXhosa, so I’ve no-ticed it’s just me at the end ofthe day who is probably speak-ing English. But my idea, real-ly, since I’m teaching a contentsubject which really requiresthem to understand the conceptmore than the language.

Teacher C: I think, its English becauseword problem are the difficultpart of the Mathematics to in-terpret words into an equation,I think English will be the bet-ter language to use becauseisiXhosa will be very much dif-ficult to interpret these wordproblems.

From Extract 3.2, Teacher C thinks learnersuse English to solve word problems. The textfrom the above extract seems to contradict whathe claimed earlier: “These learners are very weakin English”. This contradiction seemed to bebrought about by the dilemmas encountered inmultilingual classrooms. The observations dur-ing his (Teacher C) lessons revealed that learn-ers used isiXhosa to communicate and solveproblems in their groups, but immediatelyswitched to English when engaged by their

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teacher, in very brief and simple turns of utter-ances. The text in this extract also provides an-other pedagogical perspective about the expect-ed roles of the teacher compared to those of hislearners in classroom discourse.

Extract 3.3

Teacher D: isiXhosaResearcher: Why do you think learners

choose isiXhosa?Teacher D: Maybe, they choose English

because the text books are writ-ten in English, but when I’mteaching I’m using isiXhosa,whereas it is English in the textbook, but the instructions arein English and I’m using Englishfor instructions.

The teacher’s voice in extract 3.3 provides acorrect picture of how and when learners uselanguage to solve word problems. According toTeacher D, learners use isiXhosa in most of theirdiscussions, but would “choose English be-cause the text books are written in English”every time they express their solutions in writ-ten form. In addition, observations in this class-room revealed that both the teacher and learn-ers used English to translate and re-voice con-texts embedded in word problems. Teachers wereasked about the strategies that they employ inthe classroom to improve and encourage learnerparticipation and discursive talk.

Transcript 4: Do you provide learners with op-portunities to talk, discuss, argue, and engagein dialogue when you teach? How?

Extract 4.1

Teacher A: Yes, that is what I normally do;I give them classwork... I en-courage them that you can workin pairs, you can discuss it. ...Ican say that do it alone becausewe have done this last week orat the beginning of the year soyou can do alone.... I’m alwaysencouraging them to work inpairs or I even encourage themto go to the board and do thefeedback on the board.

Teacher A describes how he uses coopera-tive learning techniques to “encourage them towork in pairs” during his lessons. His strategyto engage learners in classroom discourse includ-ed allowing and encouraging learners to write theirsolution statements at the board for feedback pur-poses. In so doing, effective classroom interac-tion was not realised in this classroom. Only afew confident and brave learners benefited fromthis exercise by taking the most chances of stand-ing in front of the others and explaining how aproblem is solved. Teacher B, unlike Teacher A,had a strong belief in “peer interaction andteacher to peer interaction”, and a challenge thatshe faces is how to achieve whole classroom in-teraction, as seen in Extract 4.2.

Extract 4.2

Teacher B: Very much. Mathematics re-quires that a lot, there’s a needfor interacting, there’s a needfor peer interaction, there’sneed for teacher to peer inter-action, so we do involve themso much.

Researcher: How do you go about doingthat, what are those strategiesthat you employ usually in theclassroom?

Teacher B: Sometimes, it’s guided discov-ery, there’s a concept that I wantthem to discover, I just lead themto that concept for them to dis-cuss it and discover it, so itspeer interaction among them orit can be them and me.

The text in the extract shows that the teacherknowledge that exists in multilingual classroomscannot be easily translated and equated to pro-ductive and successful pedagogies that result inmaximum classroom interactions. When askedabout the strategies that she employs to engagelearners in discussion in the classroom, TeacherB describes “guided discovery” as a strategy toguide and allow learners to co-construct their ownknowledge. In the process, she believes that peerand teacher to learner interactions will occur.

In Extract 4.3, Teacher C has strong ideasabout how to involve learners in the teachingand learning of mathematics. These include al-lowing social interaction and creating condu-cive atmosphere in teaching.

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Extract 4.3

Teacher C: I always try at all times to befriendly with these kids, youknow when you teach Mathe-matics and if you always cometo class being angry and so onwith them you’ll discover thatit doesn’t work, but althoughsometimes they will take advan-tage if you are too friendly, I justencourage even those whodon’t want to talk, just tospeak... feel free to voice outyour opinion, if its correct orincorrect its fine as long as youare able to stand up and saywhat you want, to say withoutfear.

Teacher C presents and portrays a mathe-matics teacher as someone who should be ap-proachable to learners. The text in Extract 4.3paints a picture of a teacher who “always try atall times to be friendly with these kids” whenteaching, to draw them into active participationwithin classroom discourse. His strategy to in-volve these learners includes telling them to “feelfree to voice out your opinion” and to say whatis on their minds “without fear” of embarrass-ment before fellow peers.

The teachers were also asked about the lan-guage that they use the most for teaching math-ematical word problems in the classroom. All theteachers’ responses indicated that they use En-glish for teaching word problem-solving. Thetranscript below presents a few selected extractsthat are used as examples of teacher responses.

Transcript 5: Which language do you mostlyuse to teach word problem-solving? Why?

Extract 5.1

Teacher A: Ok, I use English, but I know mylearners they are having a prob-lem in answering the word prob-lems, to assist them I also usethe Xhosa language because Ithink they understand better theword problems in Xhosa thanin English.

Teacher B: I use English.

Teacher C: I use English... sometimes it isdifficult especially word prob-lems, it is difficult for them tointerpret it in isiXhosa, so whatI always say to them, if youdon’t understand try to read itover and over and a meaningcomes after a certain time, but Ido try there and there to explainit in isiXhosa, but that’s a diffi-cult part in Mathematics toteach those word problems.

Teacher D: I teach in English, but in someareas I use isiXhosa. Becausethey write in English, the testsare in English not in isiXhosa.

It is very clear in the texts of Extract 5.1 thatthe language of teaching word problem-solvingis English in all the classrooms. From these texts,it can be argued that mathematics teachers inthese schools, just as in other countries such asBurkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Niger(Brock-Utne and Alidou 2005; Chitera 2009), aresomehow familiar with the official LoLT requiredfor the schools. However, these teachers havenot received pedagogical support on how toimplement the policy in multilingual contexts,where the LoLT is not the learners’ home lan-guage. All teachers use English and then switchto isiXhosa when necessary. These teachers ar-gue that teaching word problems in isiXhosa isvery difficult, because of the limited vocabularyof mathematics terms in isiXhosa. Teacher Buses English only, because the learners’ homelanguage is not her home language. As such,Teacher B uses learners as resources to re-voiceand translate for peers during the lesson.

DISCUSSION

English second language studies conduct-ed amongst isiXhosa speakers in the EasternCape Province of South Africa (for example,Mayaba 2009; Webb and Webb 2008; Webb2010; Sepeng 2014a, 2014b) have reported thatlearners are not interested in learning to read orwrite in their home language. These researchersattributed this notion to the fact that isiXhosahave long since been marginalised and deval-ued. Contrary to these findings, data presentedin the present study suggest that isiXhosa doeshave a place alongside English, playing a dualrole of language of teaching and learning math-

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ematics in multilingual classrooms (Sepeng 2013,2014a). Teachers’ responses also highlighted thefact that it is difficult to persuade learners tospeak English during a mathematics lessons,unlike in other studies conducted elsewhere onthe African continent, where it was indicatedthat teachers use coercive measures to forcelearners to speak in the foreign languages usedas LoLT in those classrooms (Alidou and Brock-Utne 2005; Sepeng 2014b). As such, these re-searchers argued that the use of a foreign and/or unfamiliar language as the language of learn-ing and teaching makes teachers use traditionaland teacher-centred teaching methods. In thisstudy, and other reports presented elsewhere(Sepeng 2013, 2014a), it was also acknowledgedby the teachers that the use of both English andlearners’ home language may present uniqueproblems, where a single word could have multi-ple meanings when translated. Secada’s (1992)studies in the US pointed to findings of a signif-icant relationship between the development oflanguage and achievement in mathematics. Sec-ada reported that oral proficiency in English inthe absence of teaching in learners’ home lan-guage is negatively related to achievement inmathematics. The use of language in the class-rooms were generously influenced in absentiaby the LiEP that was introduced to schools forimplementation prior to the curriculum reform inSouth Africa, which is not easily accessible andunderstood by the teachers.

Language Policy in the School and the LiEP

Howie’s (2003, 2004) studies provided cor-roborative evidence of the damaging effects ofapartheid language-in-policy, which while notmaking English accessible to all learners, deniedthem an opportunity to use their home languag-es for learning and teaching. In particular, theLiEP in South Africa promotes multilingualismby allowing learners and teachers to use morethan one language of learning and teaching(Setati et al. 2002). The new LiEP is acknowl-edged by few teachers as ‘good but not acces-sible to them’ and has already met significanton-the-ground constraints. Similar to the find-ing by Taylor and Vinjevold (1999), schools donot opt for learners’ home language(s). This sit-uation was anticipated in this study becausemother tongue instruction has a bad imageamong speakers of African languages (Setati2002).

Although, all schools in this study choseEnglish as the LoLT, it is widely reported thatmuch code-switching takes place between En-glish and isiXhosa (Mayaba 2009; Webb 2010;Webb and Webb 2008b). Some researchers (forexample, Peires 1994) found that speakers ofAfrican indigenous languages do not find it nec-essary to study their mother tongue at schoolbecause they feel that they are already fluentand competent in the language. This is contraryto the results of this study as it indicates thatboth English and isiXhosa are used together,and both learners and teachers lacked compe-tence in their home language. As such, althoughthe teachers acknowledged the dilemma of us-ing English as LoLT in the participating schools,they preferred and continued to use English asthe language of instruction (Barkhuizen 2002;Brock-Utne 2002).

CONCLUSION

The present study demonstrates that teach-ers are faced with the complex situation of usingEnglish and isiXhosa in a dual role when teach-ing mathematics to reap benefits that appearedto come with such a pedagogical approach inthe mathematics classroom. What is also ques-tionable for the teachers was the effectivenessof such a strategy and its implications on math-ematics teacher practices in multilingual class-room settings. Further, the paper seems to sug-gest that the use of languages in the classroomswere generously influenced in absentia by theLanguage in Education Policy. Teachers’ per-ceptions about language use in mathematicsteaching and learning appeared to suggestingthat the social and economic benefits that areassociated with learning English are key factorsin terms of learners’ devaluing isiXhosa (theirhome language) and, as noted in the literaturehome language literacy competence suffers.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the findings of the present studyand multiple contexts of teaching and learningmathematics in multilingual classrooms of SouthAfrica, it is suggested that the curriculum de-signers and policy decision makers should bearin mind the dilemmas that are brought about bythe issues of languages discussed in this paper.It is against this background that the study rec-

664 PERCY SEPENG

ommends that teacher educators should plan,design, and present their teacher professionaldevelopment activities in a way that takes intocognisance the role(s) of languages in teachereducation. Further, the curriculum advisersshould also be acquainted with ways and meansof supporting teachers in employing pedagogi-cal approaches that allows for multiple uses, ifnot dual-use, of learners home languages as adetectable resource in the teaching and learningprocesses.

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