Abstract:

Language policy and implementation has been a long debate in South African education system that led to the introduction of the Language in Education Policy (RSA; 1998). The aim of this paper was to investigate the undergraduate students’ experiences towards English language and communication for educators’ module. On their first year as teacher trainees, they are introduced to five fundamental modules in Education - one of them being Language and Communication for Educators. Language and Communication for Educators is a fundamental subject that aims at introducing student teachers to English academic reading and writing skills. The skills are meant to help them through their degree studies and beyond. Students are also introduced to issues of South African Language in Education. The qualitative research approach was used to investigate the students’ experiences about the skills learnt from Language and Communication module. Students’ experiences were investigated through interviews, document reviews and focus group discussions. Constructivist paradigm was deemed necessary for the study and case study design.

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics theory as it outlines syntactic structure and functions of language in context. The study aims at understanding experiences of students’ academic language reading and writing skills. The main topics dealt with in this module are sentence structures, paragraph writing, summarising and referencing styles.

Findings of the study was that students believed that the module helped them through their undergraduate academic studies even in writing and reading in their discipline-specific literacies. They clearly reflect on the course that when they were taught the module, they did not understand the importance of the module. They only became aware of the importance of academic reading and writing skills when they had to use them in their specialisation modules and when they went to school for work integrated learning sessions.

Recommendations were that the module is necessary for teaching academic reading and writing skills at first year level. All undergraduate students must be introduced to these skills. Language skills also helped them to be familiar with the language in education policy as stated in the South African Schools Act (SASA) of 2006. The module also helped them to be able to understand their university language policy.

Keywords:

Language and communication for educators, Language Policy, fundamental subjects/modules, English second language.