Prof Robert Balfour is the deputy vice-chancellor for teaching and learning and chairperson of the Language Policy and Plan Task Team.

 

“When you look at the first statement in the draft policy, it is clear that the NWU is committed to multilingualism, with the development of African languages as one of its features and the use of English and Afrikaans as another feature.

 

“We never said that we want to get rid of Afrikaans or African languages. This would be contrary to our own Statute and indeed the Constitution itself.

 

“Afrikaans has a place at the NWU and African languages must have a greater place than they currently have.” –  Prof Robert Balfour.

 

Rest assured that the revision of the NWU’s language policy is still one of our greatest priorities and that the process is progressing well.

Before we tell you more about the recent developments, note that we are talking about two documents: the policy (which includes the planning principles) and the plan (which will consist of the eight unitary faculty language plans).

 

The latest development around the NWU Language Policy is that Senate has approved six planning principles to guide the application of the university’s language policy in teaching and learning, as well as other aspects of university communication and life. Senate approved and recommended these principles to Council at its meeting of 31 May 2018.

 

Then, on 21 June, the NWU Council similarly approved the language planning principles that will be included in the policy. (See the text box for more information about these principles.)

 

Should Council approve the language policy,  the next step will be for our eight faculties to use the approved planning principles to compile their own language policy implementation plans that will give expression to the language policy.

 

The faculties’ implementation plans will subsequently be submitted to Senate’s Language Planning Advisory Committee, which will scrutinise them before submitting them to Senate for approval.

 

To read the full article, click on the purple button below.In this comprehensive article we address two important matters.

 

The first one is the reasoning behind the planning principles and the second is why and how the faculties will use these planning principles to compile their own plans to implement the language policy.

 

For the purposes of the full article, we focus on the provision of the language in the teaching-learning arena (which includes the language of instruction and languages that add value to the curriculum).