The Language of Literacy Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual Classroom: Is Silozi Appropriate in the Zambezi Region of Namibia?

Abstract

Language is a very important tool to development because it is through language that the Vision 2030 for Namibia can be made a reality.If language of instruction is unfamiliar to the pupils as core recipients of the instruction, basic literacy goal of being a knowledge society becomes a nightmare.Therefore, there is need to understand the familiarity of both the teachers and learners with the language of instruction.Research has shown that language is very significant especially in the early stages of a child"s education.Hence, since 1953, UNESCO has encouraged mother tongue instruction in early childhood and primary education.This implies that when a child is taught in a language that he/she is familiar with, learning is made easier because concepts will be easily understood.Thus, children"s familiar language is the most efficient medium for early literacy and content instruction.The Namibian language policy stipulates that mother tongue should be used as the language of instruction in the junior primary.However, the policy only makes provision for the language of the majority group in that community to be selected as the language instruction, therefore implies that not all learners are then taught in their home language (Koker 2019, Iitula 2016, Iipinge, 2013, Harris, 2011).Premised on the notion that SiLozi was the predominant language in multilingual Zambezi region, it is accorded the status of national language and recognised as sole medium of instruction in the junior primary in the Zambezi region.Although Silozi, is used for communication in the region, it is not an indigenous Namibian language, it is considered by others as a foreign language of Zambian origin functioning as a type of lingua franca in Zambezi (Nzwala, 2015; Totemeyer, 2010).This means that majority of the children do not have access to an education in a language they understand because almost 80 percent of the learners in Zambezi being taught in SiLozi, have other home languages (Kangumu, 2009:7).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.