MULTILINGUALISM EDUCATION PROJECT REPORT : 2007 · PDF fileMULTILINGUALISM EDUCATION PROJECT...

MULTILINGUALISM EDUCATION PROJECT

REPORT : 2007-2010

Compiled by:

A/Prof Mbulungeni Madiba Co-ordinator: Multilingualism Education Project University of Cape Town Tel: +27 (0) 21650 5359 Fax: +27 (0) 21650 5045 E-mail: [email protected] Internet: www.uct.ac.za

------------------------------------------------------------- 20 October 2010

Multilingualism Education Project

Centre for Higher Education Development, UCT

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MULTILINGUALISM EDUCATION PROJECT

REPORT: 2007-2010 CONTENTS Executive Summary ………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. Project Description………………………………………………………………….. 3 2. Project Progress Report and roll-out…………………………… ..………………..4 3. Project Achievement or outputs…………………….………………………….. 14 4. Lessons learnt…………………………………………………………………….....14 5. Synopsis …………………………………………………………………………….15 6. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………18 7. Exit strategy/ Sustainability/ Integration………………………………………19

Executive Summary Background The Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) was launched in 2005 following the approval of the University’s Language Policy (approved by Senate and Council in 1999 and revised in 2003) and the Language Plan which was approved in 2003. MEP was granted SANTED funding from 2007. This report outlines the project activities covered by SANTED funding from 2007 to 2010. During this period, MEP carried out a number of activities aimed at meeting the following objectives set out in the project’s Business Plan:

To provide Xhosa communication skills course to staff and students

To facilitate the compilation of multilingual corpora and glossaries including the development of machine translator for African languages.

Achievements During the period under review, the UCT_SANTED Project achieved most of its objectives set at the beginning of the project in 2007. The following are some highlights:

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The Xhosa Communication skills course for staff which was piloted in 2006 became a huge success among staff. The number of participants grew from 60 to over 800 staff members.

The Xhosa Communication skills course was piloted in three Students Residences and was a great success.

The Xhosa for Law course was also piloted in the Law Faculty with about 20 students. About 15 students successfully completed the course and were awarded certificates of attendance.

Special Language Corpora were constructed for Statistics and Maths, Law, Economics, Physics and the Health Sciences. These corpora vary in size according to the availability of the texts.

Three glossaries were compiled and two of them, viz, Statistics and Maths and Economics have been translated from English into all the other nine official indigenous languages of South Africa and Afrikaans.

The Online Multilingual Glossaries Hypermedia was developed on Vula for the glossaries.

CD ROMS were developed for the ‘Becoming a doctor’ course in the Faculty of Health Sciences (4 for Xhosa and 4 for Afrikaans)

A workshop was held on Human Language Technology and was attended by all Universities in the Western Cape and other universities such as Rhodes University and University of Kwazulu-Natal and Durban University of Technology.

Several papers were presented at national and international conferences on language acquisition and multilingual glossaries. Out of these papers, three have already been published.

Constraints The main constraint to this project was shortage of people with expertise in field such as Second Language Teaching and Human Language Technology. It was mainly through the help of expertise and funding from Harvard University that A/Prof Mbulu Madiba was able to develop the Vula Online Hypermedia for the glossaries during his five months sabbatical leave at that university. _______________________________ 20 October 2010 Mbulungeni Madiba (Co-ordinator: MEP)



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1. Project description The Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) is based on the University’s Language Policy and Plan. The University Language Policy takes as its starting point the need to prepare students to participate fully in a multilingual society, where multilingual proficiency and awareness are essential. Accordingly, MEP

has the following objectives:

To provide guidance on how to foster a multilingual environment within the University;

To ensure the consolidation of existing multilingual and language development projects;

To ensure the development of appropriate multilingual materials in the curriculum in order to support students for whom English is a second language;

To ensure the development of communicative, workplace-orientated courses in Afrikaans and Xhosa for staff and students.

1.1 Location and Management Structure

The project is hosted at the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) and is managed by the Senate Language Policy Committee (see Annexure 4), which is chaired by a Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

1.2 Scope of the Project

The SANTED project is focused on two areas:

1. Xhosa Communication skills course for staff and students.

2. Multilingual Concept Glossaries (including the development of Machine Translations).

1.3 Beneficiaries

Both areas are beneficial to the University staff, students and African languages speakers in general. The Xhosa course for staff and students further contributes to the University’s transformation programme. The focus on multilingual concept glossaries mainly benefits students for whom English is not a first language. However, English first language students can also benefit greatly from the vocabulary lists and concordances from the Special Language Corpora.

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2. Project Progress Report and roll out

(a) Project roll out The SANTED Project commenced April 2007. The roll out of the Project was focused on two main areas: Xhosa Communication Skills and Multilingual Glossaries (hereafter referred to as Component 1 and Component 2). Component 2 also included the development of machine-translator engines for selected African languages. Component 1: The Xhosa Communication Skills course

This project was aimed at promoting multilingual awareness and multilingual proficiency among staff and students as required by the National Language Policy for Higher Education (2002). Although UCT has many indigenous languages that are spoken by staff and students, only Xhosa is recognized as the official language alongside English and Afrikaans. The choice of Xhosa is based on the fact that it is one of the major indigenous African languages spoken in the Western Cape. The learning of Xhosa is important as students in professional disciplines such as the Health Sciences, Education, Social Development and Law as some of them do their practical work in surrounding Xhosa communities where this language is dominant.

The objectives of this project were to:

Provide Xhosa Communication skills course to staff and students

Train tutors in Second Language Teaching for African languages

The Xhosa Communication skills course was piloted in 2006 with about 60 staff members from the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) and the University Libraries. SANTED funding helped in the roll out of this course to the broader university community. Initially, the course was only offered at Elementary level (Basic Xhosa), and then later at Intermediate level (Intermediate 1 & 2). The courses were offered in-house in different faculties, namely, the Centre for Higher Education Development, Commerce, Engineering & Built Environment, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law and Science and the Graduate School of Business. Our plan was to recruit at least 160 staff members per year to the Xhosa courses. This number was always exceeded because of the popular demand for the course, especially at beginners’ level. In most cases, staff members requested the course themselves to meet their communicative needs.



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Component 2: Multilingual Glossaries and Machine-Translation The project involves the development of Special Language Corpora for Science (Statistics and Maths and Physics), Health Sciences and Law and the compilation of Multilingual Concept Glossaries for these disciplines to support students for whom English is an additional language. The Corpora comprise electronic academic texts selected and compiled according to generally accepted principles of designing a Special Language Corpora. The project has the following goals:

The construction of Special Language Corpora for Science, Health Sciences and Law

The compilation of multilingual glossaries for these three disciplines

The development of machine-translation engine involving English and African language

The Multilingual Glossaries Project was launched in 2007. As already, mentioned, the glossaries are aimed at optimizing EAL mastery of concepts and vocabulary of different content-learning areas. The initial plan was to develop multilingual glossaries for Statistics and Maths, Computer Science, Law, Physics and Health Sciences as part of the pilot project. But we later abandoned the idea of developing the glossary for Computer Science as Rhodes University was developing one. Instead of Computer Science, were then decided to develop the glossary for Economics which is one of the major courses at the university and has many EAL students who needed academic language support. We also decided not to develop the glossary for Health Sciences after we were advised by the members from the Health Sciences Faculty to focus on translation and the development of CD ROMS for Afrikaans and Xhosa service courses. All these glossaries are corpus-based, that is, they are based on texts collected and arranged systematically in electronic form to allow the mining of terminologies and their related linguistic forms such as concordances using different Human Language Technology tools. The construction of a corpus for each discipline became very challenging and laborious that we finally decided to focus only on three disciplines, namely, Statistics and Maths, Economics and Law. The first two glossaries have been completed and are available in all the eleven official languages of South Africa. The Law Glossaries is only in English and will be translated into all the official languages next year. The SANTED funding also assisted in the development of the Online Multilingaul Glossaries Hypermedia on Vula which is the University Online Environment developed by the Centre for Education Technology and powered by Sakai. This networked Online Learning Environment provides students with

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easy access to the multilingual and other online courses. The MEP Online Learning Environment on Vula is shown in Screenshot 3 below.

Screenshot 3: Vula Multilingual Glossaries Hypermedia

As may be observed from the Screenshot above, Vula Multilingual Glossaries Hypermedia provides several other functions such as Chat room, Forums and Blogs which are quite useful in allowing EAL students to engage interactively with the terms and concordances. Students can also give comments in the comment spaces provided for each term. Beside the development of multilingual glossaries, an attempt was made to develop machine translation engine for African languages. The aim of this project was to develop machine-translation engine which can be used for the translation between English and African languages and between African languages themselves. This project was carried out in collaboration with the Department of Electrical Engineering. Three students were recruited to work on this project as part of their studies. One student worked on the creation of parallel corpora as part of her doctoral thesis on Text-to-Speech technology, and the other two did their undergraduate mini-theses on machine translation. Their studies final resulted in the development of two machine-translation engines for African languages with a Graphical User Interface which performs basic translation using Moses which is an open source tool. The following is the interface of this machine translation system developed by one student under my supervision:



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This translation engine requires more data to be able to function effectively. More parallel texts still need to be collected from sources such as the SABC News. The translation engine requires a parallel corpus of at least a million running tokens to translate more accurately.

(b) Activity o As set out in the workplans annually, were these successfully met?

Consult previous reports (Annual and Progress Reports) o Sum up each main activity providing analysis on its success or lack of. o Layout: indicate activity, goal and output

Component 1: Xhosa Communication skills courses The following activities were carried out to implement the project: Activity 1: Curriculum development

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The first challenge in offering the course was the development of the appropriate curriculum and the Unit Standard. Based on the pilot course, the final curriculum for the beginners’ course for staff was developed at the beginning of 2007. The curriculum allows the course to be completed in three months. Participants have to attend twelve sessions of one hour each. At the end of the course participants had a choice to take assessment and then be awarded a certificate of completion if successful or to receive a certificate of attendance if they have attended at least 10 sessions. The teaching of the course is based on the task-based approach with strong emphasis on conversational skills. Activity 2: The writing of the Xhosa manual After the development of the Curriculum, the compilation of the teaching and learning materials began. The Course Manual for the Beginners course was completed in March 2007. What is unique about this course manual is that it is based on a Task-based approach to second language teaching. In this approach participants learn the language as they try to perform certain communicative tasks such as greeting, introducing themselves to colleagues, giving their life history, family backgrounds and information about their occupations. This approach differs from the traditional approach which put much emphasis on grammar instead of communication. A mini-Xhosa-English glossary was developed to assist participants with learning the common vocabulary used in the manual. The vocabulary was extracted from the manual by means of WordSmith Tools. This manual was revised each year. Manual for Intermediate course was developed in 2008 for the pilot course and was revised during in 2009 and 2010. Activity 3: The Development of Xhosa Communication skills CD ROM A CD ROM was developed for the 2008 for the Beginners course. It comprises dialogues taken from the course manual. Each year more copies were made without changing the content. This CD ROM was highly appreciated by course participants. However, some of them felt that it is bit fast for them to hear what is being said. Activity 4: The Development CD ROMs for Health Sciences courses Four other CD ROMs were developed for the Becoming a Doctor Course (Badr) in the Health Sciences for students who are doing Xhosa. The CD ROMs were developed in collaboration with the School of Languages (Xhosa Section) and the Faculty of Health Sciences.



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This year four more CD ROMs were developed for Afrikaans. The Faculty is quite excited about these CD ROMs as they have greatly improved the teaching of Xhosa and Afrikaans Service courses. Activity 5: Training of tutors The original plan was to provide train eight (8) tutors per year. Accordingly, we designed a two weeks programme in which tutors would receive training in the theory of second language teaching, material development, presentation (including PowerPoint presentation), classroom management and assessment. But this training never took place since we were not able to find post-graduate students from the Department of African Languages and Literatures. The Department has over the last few years experienced serious decline of Xhosa students at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Only three tutors were given short training since all of them had already has good experience in second language teaching. Activity 6: Provision of isiXhosa course to staff

Since the introduction of the pilot course in 2006, the number of courses offered per year increased drastically. A total of 52 courses were offered during the period under review. About 758 staff members participated in these courses.

The courses were offered mainly during lunch time and the retention was quite satisfactory. Although assessment was optional about 350 staff members opted for it. The feedback from participates clearly indicates that staff members have benefitted greatly from the courses. They felt that the course has not only empowered linguistically, but culturally also.

Activity 6: Provision of Xhosa course for students The Xhosa course for students was piloted in 2008 from March to May) in one residence (Graca Machel). The course was later extended to other two residences, namely, Kopano and Clarinus. A total of 10 courses have been offered and about 213 students participated in these courses. Component 2: Multilingual glossaries During the period under review a number of activities were carried out to implement the multilingual glossary project. This project is an innovation to provide language support to students for whom English is not the first language. The first part of the project was focused on the construction of Special Language

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Corpora to be used for the compilation of multilingual concept glossaries. The following activities were carried out:

2.1 Design of corpora

In the first year, the main focus of the project was on the design of the Special Language Corpora for Statistics and Maths, Law, Economics and Physics. The corpora were designed according to their purpose. A generic design was developed for the four corpora.

2.2 The construction of Special Language Corpora Five Special Language Corpora were constructed during the period under review: Statistics and Maths The Statistics and Maths Corpus comprises the Students Handbook and theses

abstracts of UCT students. The corpus has about 118 000 running.

Law The Law corpus is also made of Prescribed books, tutorial letters and theses abstracts from texts from Private Law and Public Law. It also includes book extracts and cases. Economics The corpus for Economics was constructed using prescribe books and a reader of Economics 1. The corpus has about 84 000 running tokens which is a good size compared to the required size of 30 000 for this type of corpus. Physics The data for the Physics corpus was collected from two texts books for an Introductory Physics course. Theses abstracts were also added to the corpus. A module system has been used to construct the corpus. Although the size of the corpus is small, it is above the threshold of 30 000. Health Science The corpus for Health Sciences is also small as much of the focus was on the development of the CD ROM which the Faculty requested. This corpus is different from the rest because it is a parallel corpus of English and Xhosa or English and Afrikaans to cater for language needs of students learning the two languages as additional languages.

2.3 Corpus encoding



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Only minimal encoding was done on each corpus. The corpora did not require encoding since the analysis was done by using WordSmith Tools which identifies terms on the basis of their statistical significance. However, the main the main task was cleaning the texts as some of the features of texts were lost during text conversion from word or pdf to text files.

2.4 Extraction of terms and concordances Three term extraction tools were used to extract terms, namely, WordSmith Tools, Multiconcord and Paraconcord. These tools have proven to be very useful. The tools were also useful in generating concordances of the key terms.

2.5 Compilation of word lists After extracting terms from each corpus, the word lists were compiled. The selection of terms was on the basis of their frequency and also their conceptual richness. Accordingly, the word list were given to subject specialists concerned, to advise with regard to terms that should be in the final lists. The word lists were also compared to other lists in different text books. 2.6 Design of the Vula Online Environment

One of the major achievements of this project is the development of the Online Multilingual Glossaries Hypermedia on Vula which is hosted by the Centre for Educational Technology and powered by Sakai. A/Professor Mbulu Madiba was able to develop the Multilingual Vula Hypermedia during his five months leave at Harvard University. The Vula Hypermedia caters for all the 11 official languages and has spaces created for over twenty disciplines. As shown below in Fig 1 & 2 the Hypermedia allows search for definitions, concordances, pictures and uploading of tutorials and podcasts.

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Students’ First Languages

General academic language

Statistics Glossary

Physics Glossary

Law Glossary

EconomicsGlossary

Multilingual Concept Glossaries Project

2.7 Machine-aided translation engine The aim of this project was to develop machine-translation engine which can be used for the translation between English and African languages and between African languages themselves. Working with the Department of Electrical Engineering, a Graphical User Interface which performs basic translation was developed by two undergraduate students using Moses which is an open source



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tool. The translation engine requires more data to be able to function effectively. Accordingly, MEP purchased some texts of Bible Translations from the Bible Society to boost the corpora. More parallel texts still need to be collected from sources such as the SABC News. The translation engine requires a parallel corpus of at least a million running tokens to translate more accurately.

(c) Project monitoring and evaluation

The University Language Policy Committee has as one of its responsibilities, to monitor progress of all the MEP projects. The Committee meets four times a year, and in all the meetings, the Co-ordinator gives a report on the progress of each project. Thus, the participatory evaluation is used employed. In this approach, evaluation is viewed as a useful and positive tool that promotes learning and action. As this approach calls for collaboration of all the stakeholders, there is continuous evaluation of the project instead of it being a one-time, end-of-project event. The Co-ordinator provides regular reports to the University Language Policy Committee. In reporting, the activity based approach is used in reporting. The reporting is focused on what the project has achieved, what was learned about what worked or didn’t work, the impact of the activity, what needs to be done differently and how the evaluation findings will be used to improve the project.

With regard to the Xhosa Communication Skills course, participants are encouraged to give their feedback on the course. At the end of the course, participants are required to complete an evaluation form. The evaluation forms are then collected and analyzed. The preliminary results are very positive. Many staff members have given very positive responses on how it is offered the course was offered and they indicated that the course has really benefited them.

(d) Challenges, risk factors and limitations

So far the project is progressing well with few challenges. The first challenge is with regard to meeting the demand for the Xhosa Communication skills course by both staff and students. In fact, there are not enough well trained tutors for teaching African languages as second languages in the country.

The second challenge was with regard to getting people with expertise in human language technology. Human Language Technology is a new field in South Africa and very little research and training has been done so far. Working with the Department of Electrical Engineering we managed to secure funding from the NRF to recruit students in Human language Technology and

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we are hoping to attract students who will take the Machine Translation Project forward. At the moment we have one Doctoral student working on the use of Text-to-Speech system for Second Language Teaching (Sesotho and Xhosa).

3. Project Achievement or Outputs

Component 1: Xhosa Communication skills course

1 Manual for the Xhosa courses for Beginners

1 Manual for the Intermediate Xhosa course.

1 CD ROM for the Xhosa for Beginners course aligned to the Course manual.

4 CD ROMs were produced for the Becoming a Doctor Course (Badr) in the Health Sciences for students doing Xhosa.

4 CD ROMs were produced for the Becoming a Doctor Course (Badr) in the Health Sciences for students doing Afrikaans.

52 courses for Xhosa course for Staff.

10 courses for Xhosa for Beginners’ course were offered to students in three Student Residences (Graca Machel, Clarinus and Kopano).

Component 2: Multilingual Concept Glossaries

A Generic design for Special Language Corpora was developed.

5 Special language Corpora were developed for Statistics and Maths, Economics, Law, Physics and Health Sciences.

Word lists were compiled for Statistics and Maths, Economics and Law

3 Multilingual Glossries for Statistics and Maths, Economics and Law were compiled. The Statistics and Maths and Economics glossaries have been translated from English into all the nine indigenous languages and Afrikaans.

Vula Online Glossary Hypermedia: a Vula Hypermedia for the glossaries have been developed on Vula. The Hypermedia makes provision for the use of all the eleven official languages.

Machine Translation project: Two machine translation engines have been developed by students using Moses, an open source translation engine which was localized to suite African languages.

4. Lessons learnt/ unexpected results/ recommendations Several lessons were learned from the Xhosa communication skills course. First, we have learned that staff and students have a great need to learn indigenous African languages, Xhosa in this case. From the participants feedback it is clear that the course is important for equipping them with basic communicative skills and knowledge about African culture. Second, we have also learnt that the course is appreciated when staff members themselves have identified the need for the course rather than being coerced to do it. Third, we also learnt that the



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course became more effective if it was offered in-house, that is, in the respective departments or units to allow the participants to have opportunities to practice together and to encourage each other. Lastly, we have also learnt that for staff members to continue to stay in the course until the end, they need continuous motivation.

With regard to multilingual concept glossaries, the main challenge is the shortage of people with expertise in human language technology. Human Language Technology is a new field in South Africa and very little research and training has been done so far. At least we have now appointed a Lexicographer who is very helpful in compiling the wordlists and their definitions and examples. Our major challenge, however, is on translating the wordlist. This task requires translators with expertise and these tend to be very expensive as these translators charge 80 cents per word. A further problem is the lack of scientific terminology in African languages which makes it difficult to find equivalents.

The SANTED project has demonstrated how the success of language policy implementation depends on the provision of resources. The University has learnt many lessons from this project including the Organization strategies. The University’s experience in implementing the policy is detailed in my recently published paper entitled Towards multilingual higher education if South Africa: UCT Experience (published in Language Learning Journal). SANTED training workshops organized each year by the SANTED Director were also very helpful in training the project coordinators in project management. Through these workshops we also came to realize the importance of collaboration with other universities and how to share expertise and resources.

5. Synopsis

Component 1: Log frame synopsis of objectives, indicators and progress Objectives Indicators Achievement/ Output

1. Tutor training No. of tutors No of courses

Only basic training was offered to few tutors

2. Material development (Manual)

Manuals 1Copies for Basic Xhosa

1 Copies for Intermediate

3. Material development (CD ROMs)

CD ROMs 1 Xhosa for Beginners CD ROM

4 CD ROMs for Badr Xhosa course in Health Sciences

4 CD ROMs for Badr Afrikaans course in Health Sciences

4. Provision of Xhosa course for staff

No. of courses No. of staff

52 courses (classes)

756 staff members

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5. Provision of Xhosa course for students

No. of courses No. of students

10 courses in three residences

213 students

6. Evaluation research Evaluation forms -Evaluation report based on participants feedback

Nolubabalo Tyam’s Masters’ study

Component 2: Log frame synopsis of objectives, indicators and progress 1. Design of corpora Corpora designs The generic design was made for the following

corpora:

Statistics and Maths

Physics

Law

Economics

Health Sciences

2. Data collection No of texts Data were collected for:


Physics

Law

Economics

Health Sciences Physics

3. Corpus encoding Encoded texts Conversion of corpus texts from pdf or word to text format

4. Development/ localization of corpus tools

Human Language Technology tools for term extraction

The following tools were identified and employed in:

Multiconcord (localized to South African language context)

Paraconcord

WordSmith Tools

5. Machine translation engine

Parallel corpus Machine translator engine GUI for African language translators

Two machine translators developed by students as part of their Undergraduate study.

6. Extraction of terms Number of terms Terms extracted from the following corpora:


Law

Economics

7. Compilation of word lists

Number of Word Lists

Word lists have been compiled for each of the following disciplines:

Statistics and Maths (update)

Law

Economics

8. Design of glossaries online sites

Multilingual glossaries online environment

Vula Online Environment has been developed

9. Conference papers/ Copies of Papers 1. Paper presented at Harvard University



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Workshops/ Publication

Papers published Workshops

on Multilingual Higher Education. 2. Paper at COMET 2009 on Conference

on Health Skills at Cardiff University, (UK)

3. Afrilex Conference, UWC on Multilingual Glossaries.

4. Paper presented at the Department of Arts and Culture Strategic Workshop on Translation.

5. Paper presented at SANTED Workshop on Second language Learning (UKZN)

6. Paper to be presented at a Language Policy Conference at the University of Stellenbosch on the role of multilingual concept glossaries in fast-tracking learning among EAL students a t UCT

7. Paper at COMET 2010 on Conference on Health Skills at Boston University (US)

8. Attended a BAAL seminar on Using Corpora for pedagogic uses at the University of Birmingham (UK)

9. Paper at HELTASA Conference on the use of code switching in teaching

10. Paper presented at Afrilex Conference, in Gaborone on Lexicography in African languages

1. Towards multilingual higher education

if South Africa: UCT Experience (published in Language Learning Journal)

2. Fast-tracking concept learning to English as Additional Language (EAL) students through corpus-based Multilingual Glossaries (Published in Alternation)

3. The Tshivenda-English Thalusamaipfi/Dictionary as a Product of South African Lexicographic Processes (Published in Lexikos)

1. Workshop on Human Language Technology (WordSmith Tools

6. Conclusion / / Acknowledgements The project has progressed well and has achieved most of the objectives set at the beginning of the project. The Xhosa Communication skills courses for staff have

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far exceeded our expectation. The corpus-based Multilingual Glossaries developed was a major breakthrough in the intellectualization of African languages. The support of the Senate Language Policy Committee team and particularly the Dean of CHED, A/Prof Nan Yeld is highly acknowledged. Thanks also to A/Prof Rochelle Kapp who acted as the Co-ordinator in the first half of 2009 when I was on sabbatical leave. The support of WEB Du Bois Institute at Harvard University to the project during my five months sabbatical leave is highly appreciated.

Annexure 1

MANAGEMENT OF THE PROJECT

Membership: (period 01 July 2005 to 30 June 2008)

MEMBERSHIP: LANGUAGE POLICY COMMITTEE

Status Working Group Terms of Office

Composition A Deputy Vice-Chancellor nominated by the Vice-Chancellor

Prof MJ Hall ex officio

The Dean of Higher Education Development

A/Prof N Yeld ex officio

The Dean of Humanities Prof MP Ensor ex officio

The Deans of Faculties, or nominees EBE: Prof E van Steen Law: Prof F du Bois Prof BD Reddy Prof D Pitt Prof D Hellenberg

01.07.05 to 30.06.08 ex officio

The Employee Relations Manager Mr N Lungu ex officio

The Co-ordinator: Language Development Group (CHED), or nominee

A/Prof R Kapp 01.07.05 to 30.06.08

The Co-ordinator: Multilingualism Education Project

A/Prof M Madiba ex officio

The Chair, Academics’ Association, or nominee

Dr D Mashao 01.07.05 to 30.06.08

The Chair, Employees Union or nominee Ms V Scholtz 01.07.05 to 30.06.08

The Director of the School of Languages and Literatures, or nominee

Ms P Maseko 01.07.05 to 30.06.08

A representative from PRAESA Ms X Guzula

Ms N Mahobe-Nkenge (Alt)

01.07.05 to 30.06.08

A representative from CALLSSA 01.07.05 to 30.06.08



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Two student representatives, nominated by the Students’ Representative Council

Ms P Segale

Mr T Moalusi

01.07.05 to 30.06.08

01.07.05 to 30.06.08

Assessor Members:

The Registrar or nominee

The Director, Institutional Planning Department (ex Officio)

The Skills Development Facilitator

The Transformation Officer

Mr HT Amoore

Ms J Favish

Ms S Ansorges

Ms N Mohamed

Chair

A member nominated by the Vice-Chancellor

Prof MJ Hall 01.07.15 to 30.06.08

Deputy Chair A member of the Committee chosen by the Committee

Terms of Office Three years from 1 July

Serviced by The Co-ordinator: Multilingualism Education Project

A/Prof M Madiba

Servicing Officer Details

Email: [email protected] Phone: 650-5359

Annexure 2

UCT LANGUAGE POLICY COMMITTEE

Membership: (period 01 July 2008 to 30 June 2012)

A Deputy Vice-Chancellor nominated by the Vice-Chancellor

TBA

The Dean of Higher Education Development A/Prof N Yeld Acting Chair

The Nominee for Dean of Humanities A/Prof C Chandler Ex officio

The Deans of Faculties, or nominees EBE: A/Prof M. Dlodlo Law: Mr J Jonker Science: Prof T Dunne Commerce: Mr G Nodoba HS: Prof D Hellenberg

Ex officio

The Employee Relations Manager Mr J Cloete Ex officio

The Co-ordinator: Language Development Group (CHED), or nominee

A/Prof R Kapp

The Co-ordinator: Multilingualism Education Project

A/Prof M Madiba Servicing Officer

The Chair, Academics’ Association, or nominee

Dr M Paxton

The Chair, Employees Union or nominee Ms A Plos

The Director of the School of Languages and Literatures, or nominee

Dr A Nyamende

mailto:[email protected]

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Co-opted member from the Department of English Language and Literature

A/Prof Ana Deumert

A representative from PRAESA Ms S Xamlashe

Ms E Fellies

A representative from CALLSSA Dr M Prinsloo/ Dr Carolyn McKinney

A representative from Student Affairs

A representative from the Residences Committee

Dr I Mackintosh

Ms C January

Two student representatives, nominated by the Students’ Representative Council

Mr Mzwandile Kwenyama

Ms Ayanda Dhladhla

Co-opted member from the Department of Communication and Development

Co-opted member from the School of Languages and Literatures

Mr M Steyn

Ms Rose Smouse

Assessor Members:

The Registrar or nominee Mr HT Amoore

The Director, Institutional Planning Department

Ms J Favish

Ex officio

The Skills Development Facilitator Ms Kirsty Edwards

The Transformation Officer Vacant



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Annexure 3: Publicity of the Project in University (Daily

News & Monday Paper articles)

Monday Paper, Volume 25.05 23 March 2006

back to archived volume

Masithethe isiXhosa, zihlobo zam!

Molo. Unjani? Ngubani igama lakho?

If this simple greeting (Hello, how are you? What's your name?) is beyond your comprehension, then the beginners' course in isiXhosa for staff is for you.

Launched this month by the Centre for Higher Education (CHED), the course is a major step in bridging the linguistic and cultural gap between students and staff by equipping them with basic interpersonal communication skills in Xhosa.

A basic working knowledge of an African language will assist a lecturer to identify difficulties experienced by certain students who have been plunged into an English-speaking environment, and which affects their academic performance.

However, the thought of grappling with grammatical rules in a different language can be daunting if not outright frightening.

CHED has adopted a more relaxed, communicative approach in which learners are immediately steeped in the language from day one. Participants are introduced to a rich assortment of expressions that enables them to ask and answer questions, initiate and respond to various statements and engage in face-to-face conversations. They are then put through their paces through role play and acting out different scenarios, such as a classroom or a cafeteria.

Multimedia and online language learning tools are also used.

The course is also an introduction to isiXhosa culture.

Project co-ordinator, Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, explains: "In whatever language you use, knowing what to say, how and when to say it, and to whom, is crucial. Having background cultural knowledge will guide you in expressing yourself appropriately."

The course will run over 12 weeks, after which certificates will be issued, based on an oral and written, examination. Staff who do not take the test will still receive attendance certificates if they attend at least 80% of the sessions.

Course participation will also be taken into account in the PASS and academic staff performance appraisal.

The project is in its pilot stage with lessons being conducted among CHED staff.

Through the pilot, CHED hopes to ascertain whether staff can acquire basic conversational skills and to pinpoint the challenges involved.

http://www.uct.ac.za/mondaypaper/archives/?paper=220

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The aim is for all staff at CHED to have done the course within three years (those who are already proficient in isiXhosa are of course exempted).

Based on its success, the programme will then be rolled out to other faculties.

The isiXhosa course is part of the broader university Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) designed to acknowledge the other languages in use within UCT.

Dean of CHED, Prof Nan Yeld, comments: "Communication courses in isiXhosa are not new to the university. What is of particular interest to MEP is how best to promote multilingualism among the majority of UCT's staff. We will carefully evaluate the course to see how effective this approach is and if we will need to develop customised courses for different units. We may also need to provide follow-on courses for staff and students to meet functional needs, such as reading the Monday Paper in isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English."

30 November 2007

R1.3 million boost for multilingualism 20 April 2007

Trish Gibbon (SANTED), Zamo Shongwe (SANTED), Tove Kvil (NORAD), Mbulungeni Madiba (MEP) Inger Stoll (Royal Norwegian Embassy) and Ziyanda Cele (SANTED) during a recent visit to UCT to celebrate a R1.3 million donation to the

development of multilingualism at UCT.

UCT’s Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) has received about R1.3 million in funding from the South Africa Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (SANTED) to boost the development of multilingualism at UCT.

A delegation from SANTED, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Norwegian Embassy visited UCT last week to toast the donation. The delegation included NORAD advisor Tove Kvil; SANTED programme director and Royal Norwegian Embassy Counsellor, Inger Stoll; and SANTED’s Ziÿanda Cele, Zamo Shongwe and Trish Gibbon.

MEP will use the funding to establish a communication skills course for staff, as well as the development of language resources such as multilingual corpora and glossaries to support students whose first language is not English, says Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, co-ordinator of the project.

One of the key objectives of the project is to promote the learning of isiXhosa, and a communication skills course has already been set up for staff.



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- Author: Chris McEvoy

Daily News, 30 November 2007

Thetha msebenzi thetha

The winning team: Students who have completed the masithethe isiXhosa course showcase their certificates.

Stimulating, scary and enlightening.

That was how a student described the isiXhosa course for beginners, masithethe isiXhosa, as participants who have completed it were handed certificates on 26 November.

The 12-week one-hour course is offered twice a year by the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) in the Centre for Higher Education Development to promote multilingualism at UCT, which is viewed as pivotal to transformation, and to equip staff and students with basic communication skills in Xhosa.

According to Associate Professor Mbulu Madiba, MEP co-ordinator, the course was piloted last year with 60 people taking part. This year the number has grown to over 200 participants and plans were afoot to introduce intermediate and advanced courses.

Madiba told the "graduating" students that completing the course should mean more than just a piece of paper.

"Learning a new language is like acquiring a new soul, it is something that adds value to our lives," he said.

- Author: Myolisi Gophe

Monday Paper Volume 26.06 7 May 2007

Speaking many languages

Language issues have dominated the political landscape since 1994 and universities all over South Africa are grappling with the complexities of multilingualism in their constituencies.

At UCT, important successes have been made following the implementation of the Language Plan, approved by Senate and Council in 2004.

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Take a moment to consider headway being made by the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP), launched in 2005.

Have you noticed the multilingual signage on campus? Or that the corporate logo now carries three official languages, as do the website and corporate publications. Colleagues in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) and Libraries staff are greeting each other "Molo bhuti/sisi. Kunjani?", the result of participating in a pilot isiXhosa communication skills course in 2006.

This year the courses have been extended to chemical engineering, health sciences, the Development and Alumni Department and the Graduate School of Business.

"Our target is to train 160 staff members a year - and we've filled that quota already this year," MEP co-ordinator, Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, noted.

The plan is to extend these classes to students.

"Our students are not going to work in a monocultural/ monolingual society," Madiba added. As a result, MEP together with the School of Languages and Literatures, has drafted a proposal to introduce isiXhosa and Afrikaans service courses for law. These courses are already running in the health sciences.

In promoting African languages to academic status, important work is being done after the launch of a pilot project for multilingual glossaries in the Department of Statistical Sciences, headed by Professor Tim Dunne.

In this project, 250 mathematical and statistical terms, or "frequent concepts", suitable for undergraduate level have been selected from a list of around 3 680 terms. The plan is to get students to translate these terms into their languages and to provide their own equivalents.

"As students translate, we can see the conceptual gaps," Madiba said.

Madiba believes this is where the greatest challenge lies - in teaching and learning, where student throughputs are affected.

"It's important that students acquire concepts in their own languages," Madiba added, "otherwise they rote learn and plagiarise."

CHED's Language Development Group has also played a pivotal role in developing academic literacy skills for students who came in with English as a second language.

Another pilot project has been initiated on the construction of Special Language Corpora for African Languages (SpelCAL), which are aimed at providing language resources for the development of multilingual glossaries in science, health sciences and law.

Daily news Xhosa course helps transformation 27 October 2008



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Diversity: The basic Xhosa communication skills course will be extended to many more residences at UCT.

UCT's plans vision to diversify residences received a boost when scores of students completed the basic Xhosa communication skills course known as masithethe isiXhosa (let's speak Xhosa).

This has given them an opportunity to learn more about the Xhosa culture, undergone a personal transformation, noted Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, co-ordinator of the Multilinguism Education Project at the Centre for Higher Education Development.

"If you speak to a people with a language that is not their mother tongue, you are only speaking to their heads. But if you speak in their language, you are talking to their hearts and souls," Madiba explained to the 32 students who received their certificates on 22 October.

He said the six-month course, which was hosted in the evenings, was piloted at Graça Machel Hall and Clarinus residences after students requested it.

Because of its success, it will be rolled out to two more residences in the first semester next year.

Initially, Madiba said, they were hoping to have 10 students from each residence during the pilot project, but 58 enrolled.

Grant Willis, acting director at the Department of Student Housing and Residence Life, said the success of the course would help break barriers between students.

"The student housing allocation policy allows for the creation of an environment in which students from diverse backgrounds live together," he explained. "It is not enough just to place students, but we need to ensure that the environment succeeds. This Xhosa course assists the process greatly."

- Author: Myolisi Gophe Monday Paper, Volume 27.19 3 November 2008

back to archived volume

Residence students learn isiXhosa

UCT's plans to diversify residences received a boost when scores of students completed the basic Xhosa communication skills course, Masithethe isiXhosa (Let's speak Xhosa).

This has given them an opportunity to learn more about the Xhosa culture, noted Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, co-ordinator of the Multilinguism Education Project at the Centre for Higher Education Development.

http://www.uct.ac.za/mondaypaper/archives/?paper=288

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"If you speak to a people in a language that is not their mother tongue, you are only speaking to their heads. But if you speak in their language, you are talking to their hearts and souls," Madiba explained to the 32 students who received their certificates on 22 October Daily news

Xhosa course growing bigger 4 December 2009

Happy moments: One hundred staff members graduated from the isiXhosa course recently.

As Professor Mbulungeni Madiba greeted everyone and joked in isiXhosa, his students burst into laughter, with the braver responding in a rather broken language. As student Daniel Franco puts it, that served to break the ice and start conversations in isiXhosa, fulfilling the objective of the isiXhosa course for beginners, popularly known as Masithethe isiXhosa.

The 12-week, one-hour course, offered by the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), has been attended by

more than 800 UCT staff since its introduction in 2006. The idea is to promote multilingualism at the university, which is viewed as pivotal to transformation, and to equip staff with basic communication skills in isiXhosa.

Franco, a technical specialist with ICTS, attests to this. "I have a better understanding of the language and know the basics," said Franco, who was among the 100 staff members who graduated from the course on 25 November. He continues to learn the language by conversing with isiXhosa-speaking people around the university.

Erisan Nyamutenha, another student, said as a foreigner the course has given him a sense of belonging and made him aware of the Xhosa culture, things that make integration easy.

Professor Nan Yield, dean of CHED, said the course fits well with UCT's objective to improve institutional culture.

Daily news

Students graduate with isiXhosa skills Tuesday, 3 November 2009 Some 50 students from Graça Machel Hall, Clarinus and Kopano residences are the latest graduates from an isiXhosa-communication programme run by the Multilingual Education Project (MEP) in collaboration with the Department of Student Affairs (Student Residence Life). Last week, the students were capped at a ceremony hosted at Graça Machel Hall, toasting their completion of the 12-session Masithethe isiXhosa. By

the end of this introductory programme, students are able to hold a decent if basic conversation - greetings, introductions and so forth - in isiXhosa, and also have an elementary understanding of Xhosa culture, explains MEP co-ordinator, Assoc Prof Mbulungeni Madiba. While this was only the second run of the programme at UCT residences, the university is keen to see it rolled out to all residences, says Madiba.

© University of Cape Town 2009. All rights reserved.



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Daily news Today's news

Xhosa course in demand 3 December 2010

Happy Times: Prof Mbulungeni Madiba (middle, right) celebrates with (back, from left) Charmaine Buys, Charles Slater and Emma Makin; (middle) Caren Lodewyks; and (front, from left) Rovena Hendricks, James Moos and Abimbola Windapo, who completed the Masithethe isiXhosa course.

The opportunity to learn about the lives and

culture of the Xhosa-speaking people and being able to speak some basics of isiXhosa have attracted over 1 000 UCT staff and students to the Masithethe isiXhosa course over the past four years.

A notable achievement, especially as this is in line with UCT's goal of changing its institutional climate and making the campus friendlier and more accessible to all people, said deputy vice-chancellor Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo at the recent graduation ceremony of the 2010 class.

Offered by the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) in the Centre for Higher Education Development, and funded by the South Africa-Norway Tertiary Education Development programme, the course was piloted in 2006 to staff, and to students two years later.

Since then, 758 staff members and 350 students have participated in the programme. In 2010, MEP in collaboration with the School of Languages and Literatures, also piloted the IsiXhosa in Law course for law students.

Nhlapo urged project managers to monitor the need for a similar course in Afrikaans, the third official language spoken in the Western Cape.

Project co-ordinator, Associate Professor Mbulungeni Madiba, said many participants noted in their evaluations that they enrolled on the course for social purposes, to be able to break the ice with isiXhosa speakers, and to increase their cultural capital.

"Learning any language helps to understand those who speak it a little more, and in this way one benefits from seeing things from other people's point of view," Madiba added.

Anyone interested to join the next course can contact Nonkululeko Nokhepheyi at extension 5359.

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