Computers and African Languages in Education: An ICT Tool for the Promotion of Multilingualism at a South African University. Conversations.

Abstract

This article describes a web-based application designed to provide meaningful access to the study of Computer Science to speakers of an African language who have limited experience of using English for academic purposes. Our research is focused upon students of Computer Skills in the Extended Studies Programme at Rhodes University who have studied English as a second language for the matriculation examination. The intervention involves the cooperative production and sharing of multilingual support material in both English and the students' home languages. The article illustrates how the use of computers has the potential to solve some of the problems traditionally associated with the use of African languages as additional media of instruction in tertiary education (i.e. lack of terminology and resources in the African languages, stigma attached to their use, etc.). We maintain that learning about computers partly in their stronger language (i.e. their home language) could give students increased and more meaningful access to an educationally and economically empowering field of study.

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