A PILOT STUDY OF TRANSLANGUAGING LEARNING FACILITATION: A COMPUTER SCIENCE CASE STUDY

At Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU), most students’ home language is Setswana or Sepedi. The community surrounding SMU is Setswana or Sepedi speaking. However, English is the medium of instruction (MoI) at SMU. Most students entering SMU are not fully proficient in English. However, due to pressure of transformation in South African higher education institutes (HEIs), there is a significant change to adopting the use of English as the only MoI in a number of universities that used to be bilingual. MoI seems to be a barrier to education. Multilinguals’ use translanguaging (TL) methodology as a teaching practice, which shows that languages are not separate entities. TL is used as a pedagogical approach to enhance the teaching and learning of computer science (CS) concepts. It is envisaged that an in-depth understanding of learned material is achieved when TL is used. This also necessitates the use of students’ home languages to navigate and understand the meaning of concepts taught, especially in technically loaded content subjects such as Computer Science (CS). This research intends to contribute to the testing and evaluation of TL methodology in teaching a CS module or course at SMU. It will also provide a way forward in incorporating the use of TL in CS curriculum development. The research will also discuss collaborative efforts among lecturers from different departments in using TL in teaching and learning of subject material in content-based courses.