336 / 721
Emerging patterns
2.
Students entering into mute space:
– a situation where silence takes precedence over interaction between the students and some members of staff.
This is caused by:
Unfamiliarity with language of instruction
I attended township schools, so most of the time I was speaking my home language … and we were taught some subjects in vernacular
language. Then I came here [where] you always have to speak in English … At first, because you know people are like so good in this language
and wena (you) are not as good and then you like: oh, let me keep quiet because … people are going to laugh at me with my poor English ...
[Student X]
…you go to a lecture you are with a lecturer from 8 until 10 he speaks English. You know, I went to a township school where a teacher speak to you in isiZulu the
whole day…
In lectures, I really okay, sometimes it’s more like to say I feel no need to participate. You know, the first assignment that I
got, the lecturer said ‘no you have to correct your grammar you have to do this and that’… I don’t understand what grammar is, this is
what, this is supposed to be a comma, this is supposed to be a full stop… it was language, coming from a different language and coming
here it’s more like saying you always fix your grammar [Student J]
Problem of interacting with others – social exclusion
Yeah! Language barrier, I am really embarrassed. It’s not that I don’t encourage mother tongue, but the thing is it has been over encouraged
here that …you know, I can’t count the number of students I meet who find it difficult to construct a sentence without ‘mina’, ‘nje’, ‘pela’. You
know, they use these [vernacular] words, they can’t get conjunctions easily. [Student M]
Now I have to learn double [my emphasis] … I will approach a black student but I won’t greet her in my own language: yebo or
kunjani? [hello or how are you?]. I say ‘Hey, how are you?’. It was bad but funny, you know. I had seen how people respond, ‘Hey, how
are you’. I started to do that: ‘Hey, how are you?’. [Student H]