This paper provides the rationale and purpose for a critical literacy awareness strategy, implemented to 20 English second language students at a township secondary school in South Africa. This empirical study provides insight into using newspapers as a pedagogical tool to develop students' language and critical literacy skills. Using different…

The transformation of higher education has been a pressing concern for policy makers and practitioners. This article provides examples of the transformative potential of assessments designed within the framework of a multi-literacies and heteroglossic pedagogy in an Applied English Language course at a South African university. These assessments,…

This chapter addresses the issue of pedagogy and bilingual/multilingual education: how best to match teaching-and-learning approaches to the literacy development needs of students in multilingual educational settings. More specifically, it makes the case for what is known as the "Sydney school" genre-based literacy development approach.…

This article is the guest editors' introduction to the special issue "Language in Epistemic Access: Mobilising Multilingualism and Literacy Development for More Equitable Education in South Africa". The issue offers complementary perspectives on improving epistemic access for all learners but especially those whose home language does not…

Growing interest in bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted an urgent need for reading material in African languages. In this paper, we focus on authors, one of several groups of stakeholders with responsibility for meeting this demand. We address three main issues: the nature and extent of African language publishing for…

This article describes the effects of an interventionist form-focused course on the written English of first-year second language university learners. For two semester courses the form (or grammar) of the language was concentrated upon. During the first semester the use of correct grammar was focussed on intensively, while during the second…

Children of the poor are at greater educational risk than the children of the wealthy, but to what extent, if any, are these risks the result of undetected linguistic considerations? This chapter reviews long-standing issues that influence students' academic and social experiences in school as well as more contemporary debates that respond to…

A Grahamstown (South Africa) survey determining the number of slang words known by 12- to 17-year-old public and private school students demonstrates that age, not sex, is the more significant variable, although school type is also important. Predicts that slang usage by girls may soon equal that of boys. (DM)

Investigates whether the language characteristics of Northern Sotho and English song-texts have any effects on children's singing pitch and whether there are any differences between the Sotho- and English-speaking children's singing pitch. Demonstrates differences in children's singing pitch due to the languages of song-texts and linguistic…

The Communication Committee of the South African National Council for the Deaf is currently developing an artificial sign language which could be used with all of the country's ethnolinguistic groups. Guidelines and constraints for developing such an artificial language are outlined. (CB)

Examines the constraints on the realization of "/t/" in New Zealander English. On the basis of an examination of the speech of two similar speakers from that country, a series of allophonic rules is provided. The article shows that the distribution of allophones for these speakers is not the same as for other speakers who have been…

An examination of cross-cultural toleration in South African university classrooms and speculation on the causes and effects of this toleration are presented in this paper. South African faculty attitudes are surveyed and compared against U.S. faculty attitudes. Findings expose the need for improvement regarding cross-cultural communication in the…