Abstract:

The Afrikaans language acquisition course for medical students at the University of Cape Town has received national acclaim due to its contribution to the promotion of multilingualism in South Africa. The MBChB-students receive tuition in career-orientated, Afrikaans communication skills for two years, which begins during the second year of studies, in order to communicate with Afrikaans-speaking patients. The majority of students are acquiring Afrikaans as a second or third additional language. This paper intends to chart academic performance throughout two years of Afrikaans language acquisition and then compare it to how the same students performed at the end of an Afrikaans pilot study amongst fourth-year medical students in hospitals. How effectively the students were able to communicate by the end of the fourth year exit assessment, in the hospital pilot program, will then be assessed in the light of their linguistic and communicative development over the previous two years.

Keywords:

Foreign-language learning, assessment results, MBChB pilot study.