ADOPTING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN TEACHING COMMUNICATION AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS: LESSONS FROM SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
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This study sought to determine the potential place of Afrikaans and IsiXhosa as
indigenous languages to promote communication education in South African
Universities. This study examined the approaches and curriculum development of the
use of Afrikaans and IsiXhosa to teach journalism trainees in Rhodes and North-West
Universities. For the purpose of this study, uses and gratification theory was employed
to examine how communication and engineering instructors have adopted Afrikaans
and IsiXhosa to teach and train students in the field of engineering and journalism. The
method adopted for this study was a mixed method approach combining qualitative
content analysis, observation and interviews. Furthermore, a review of previous studies
on the adoption of Afrikaans and IsiXhosa for communication and engineering
education was examined. The result showed that many of communication and
engineering trainers believed that the use of Afrikaans for communication and
engineering education aids socio-cultural development among white South Africans.
From the findings, it was observed that the idea of integrating Afrikaans and IsiXhosa
to teach journalism was premised on promoting local identities. Interestingly, the result indicated that Rhodes School of Journalism has a course focused on IsiXhosa for
Journalism, which is a compulsory course for first year undergraduate students to
understand the application of IsiXhosa in journalism practice for creating community
based solutions. The study, therefore, recommends that communication educators can
adopt indigenous languages for teaching communication and engineering education in
Nigeria and other African countries. The adoption of indigenous languages in teaching
communication education would facilitate social integration and multicultural
development.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General)