System 30 (2002) 499515

www.elsevier.com/locate/system

Language-in-education policy:
students perceptions of the status and
role of Xhosa and English
Gary P. Barkhuizen*
Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand

Received 9 January 2002; received in revised form 30 April 2002; accepted 17 June 2002

Abstract
The promotion of multilingualism and the advancement of African languages in South
Africas education system are the two main threads running through language-in-education
policy proposals and statements. This policy is manifest in decisions about which languages to
include in the school curriculum and which languages to use as languages of learning and
teaching (LOLT). This article reports on a study which examined these issues, paying parti-
cular attention to the relative role and status of Xhosa and English, from the perspective of
high school students studying Xhosa as a rst language and English as a second language.
The ndings show that the students have a preference for English as the LOLT and for life
after school but the position of Xhosa as LOLT and school subject is less clear. Implications
for teachers and language-in-education planners are considered and it is suggested that
research of a more qualitative nature further explore these issues.
# 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Language-in-education planning; African languages; Learners beliefs; South Africa

1. Introduction

However much language planners and policy makers might not like to hear it,
English holds a dominant position in education in South Africa. Students in schools
want to learn English, and their parents agree with them. In contrast, the two main

* Fax: +64-9-308-2360.
E-mail address: g.barkhuizen@auckland.ac.nz (G.P. Barkhuizen).

0346-251X/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0346-251X(02)00051-9
500 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

themes evident in the language-related clauses in the Constitution of South Africa

(Republic of South Africa, 1996) are the promotion of multilingualism in the coun-
try and the need for the state to take practical and positive measures to elevate the
status and advance the use of the indigenous languages of the country [chap. 1(2)].
These themes have in turn been reected as proposals in numerous language policy
documents, both national (Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology,
1999) and provincial (Eastern Cape Legislature, 2000), as well as in a range of dis-
cussion documents, including those published for distribution by the Pan South
African Language Board (PANSALB, 1998a,b) and the Language Plan Task Group
(LANGTAG, 1996).
In the educational context this means that all of South Africans 11 ocial languages1
should be taught in schools as subjects and all should be used as the languages of
learning and teaching (LOLT), taking into account, of course, both regional lan-
guage demographics and practicality. There have been fervent reactions to these
proposals, most highlighting, in their support, their impracticality. Debates on their
implementation usually take place among language acquisition planners, politicians,
educators and language researchers. Those often excluded from these discussions
and decisions are the people who go to school and to work every day and who want
to make a success of their lives, both economically and socially. As in any normal
society, they want to live in a culturally integrated, multilingual society as people
with the power to make decisions about how they live their lives and how they can
achieve the goals they have set for themselves.
In South Africa, notwithstanding the social and ideological structures examined
by, amongst others, Pennycook (1998) and Tollefson (1991), English is in many
ways closely connected with these goals. It has often been stated that English is the
language of progress, development and economic success (Dyers, 1999; Kamwan-
gamalu, 2000), claims also made about multilingualism (Alexander, 1995; Norton
Peirce and Ridge, 1997). The African languages, despite large numbers of speakers,
simply cannot compete with the status of English, and the aim of establishing a truly
multilingual society in South Africa, in the sense envisaged by politicians and lan-
guage planners, is far from being achieved.
This article examines these concerns from a dierent angle. It presents high school
students perceptions of the status and role of Xhosa (an indigenous African language)
and English in the educational context. Specically, the study surveyed 2825 students
in 26 high schools throughout the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces. All the
students followed both the English Second Language (ESL) and the Xhosa First
Language (XL1) syllabuses. An 80-item survey questionnaire was designed to capture
a broad range of the students perceptions of the teaching and learning of XL1.
Included in the questionnaire were questions which related to language-in-education
policy issues, particularly the status and role of Xhosa and English, and it is the
responses to these questions which are the subject of this article.

1
The 11 ocial languages are: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, North Sotho (Pedi), South Sotho, Swati,
Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu.
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 501

2. Policy matters

Socio-political and ideological principles underlying the Constitution of the

Republic of South Africa, such as the promotion of democracy for all South Africans,
the reconstruction of South African society (by addressing past imbalances and dis-
criminatory practices in particular), and the reconciliation of the peoples of South
Africa (Barkhuizen and Gough, 1996), are evident in the central themes running
through the national language policy: (1) Societal multilingualism is a national
resource that is an integral part of nation building and the creation of access. (2) The
linguistic equality of all South African languages. (3) The need for actively promoting
African languages, which have, unlike English and Afrikaans, been neglected in the
past. To guard against the possibility of future linguistic domination, the Bill of
Rights in the Constitution (Republic of South Africa, 1996), states that linguistic
discrimination is explicitly forbidden [chap. 2, clause 9(3)], and that everyone has
the right to use the language of their choice (clause 30).
It follows, then, that at the core of the language-in-education policy statements are the
following two principles (Vijnevold, 1999): (1) Redressing past linguistic imbalances and
encouraging educational multilingualism. (2) Ensuring linguistic freedom of choice for
students in terms of language as subject and language of learning and teaching (LOLT) in
the context of gaining democratic access to broader society. The ideological basis of this
policy is quite clear: Given the policy of equality of all languages in multilingual South
Africa, the implication is that English by denition should enjoy no special privileges
(including educational privileges) in relation to the other languages of South Africa.
General language-in-education principles become manifest in the interrelated
domains of language as subject (as formulated in the relevant language syllabus) and
LOLT. For the former, debates have centred around which languages should be
studied/learned as school subjects, how many languages should be learned and when
they should be introduced and taught.
The debate concerning mother-tongue as LOLT has without doubt been the most
vociferous with regard to African language education in South Africa. The content
of these debates is now fairly familiar and has been covered extensively in the lit-
erature. The main concerns have been as follows:

1. There have been historical overviews of LOLT in the South African educa-
tional system, with particular reference to mother-tongue LOLT during the
apartheid era (Hartshorne, 1987).
2. Many of the debates have centred around various models of mother-tongue
education: How long should mother-tongue languages be maintained as the
LOLT? When should additional languages be introduced as the LOLT?
Should there be more than one LOLT? Attempts to answer these questions
can be found in, amongst many others, Heugh (1995) and Meyer (1995).
There is support for the development of a model of additive bilingualism
(see Luckett, 1993), an attractive concept precisely because it ts into the
general orientation of promoting multilingualism and advancing the cause
of African languages in the context of democracy.
502 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

3. Often, in discussions of such models and proposals, strong resistance to the

use of African mother tongues as LOLT has been reported (Marivate, 1993;
Nkondo, 1982).
4. The role of mother-tongue instruction in cognitive development has been
discussed (Luckett, 1995; Makoni, 1993; Young, 1995), usually with reference
to relevant research.
5. Attitudes of students and teachers (and to a lesser extent, parents) to the use
of mother-tongue African languages as LOLT have also been the topic of
much discussion (Kamwangamalu, 1997; Marivate, 1993) and sometimes also
of research (Dyers, 1999; Hayman, 1999; Mawasha, 1996).
6. Finally, the position and status of African languages as LOLT have been closely
analysed within the broader socio-political context of South Africa. Work by
Cluver (1992), Kamwangamalu (2000), Kembo (2000) and Satyo (1993), for
example, cover issues such as language rights, the demand for English-medium
education, the status of African languages and corpus planning activities.

Given the focus on promoting educational multilingualism, the central role of

English as the dominant LOLT has been de-emphasised. It is typically argued,
despite popular opinions to the contrary, that all languages are capable of func-
tioning as LOLTs and that having English as the LOLT very often denies rather
than guarantees access while continuing to maintain the privileged status of the elite
(Heugh, 1992; Phillipson, 1992).

3. Language learner perceptions

The LANGTAG (1996, p. 124) document states that decisions with regard to
language-in-education policy should take into account the wishes and attitudes of
parents, teachers and students. Obviously, students in schools are an integral part
of the learning/teaching process: they are the ones who sit in classes day after day
typically on the receiving end of decisions made about what is to be taught, how it is
to be taught and why in the rst place it should be taught. Although they have an
insiders view of what is going on, their perceptions of what they observe and
experience are seldom taken into account.
The aim of the study reported in this article was to discover high school students
perceptions of the roles played by Xhosa and English in their educational lives.
Similar research in a South African context has investigated students perceptions of
(a) the teaching and learning they experienced in English second language classes
(Barkhuizen, 1998a,b), and (b) the purpose of selected learning activities in multilingual
classes (Barkhuizen, 1999). Gough (unpublished data), in a small-scale research project
which investigated students perceptions of the status of Xhosa in education, found
quite negative attitudes towards Xhosa. So too did Dyers (1999) in her study of Xhosa
university students attitudes towards South African African languages.
From these studies, and those conducted in other contexts (see Cotterall, 1999;
Gremmo and Riley, 1995; McCargar, 1993; Sakui and Gaies, 1999), it is clear that
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 503

language learners do have quite valid beliefs about their experiences, and that given
the chance, they will articulate them. This is my main motivation for undertaking
the study described in this article. Kumaravadivelu (1991, p. 107) says that the
more we know about the learners personal approaches and personal concepts, the
better and more productive our intervention will be. By this he means that if
teachers, language planners and administrators are aware of where students are
coming from (how they approach language learning, their attitudes to the languages
they learn, what they feel about their language learning experiences, and how they
act upon these feelings), they will better be able to facilitate desired learning
outcomes in the classroom. In the case of this study, the students perceptions of
planning issues will also inform those involved in language-in-education policy
matters.

4. The study: data-collection and analysis

Procedures for collecting and analysing the data were designed with the following
two broad inter-related goals in mind: (1) The research was to be exploratory. By
this I mean that my aim was to gain insight into an area which had not been widely
researched; in other words, to test the waters, to get a supercial but wide view of
the situation, a research aim often associated with survey research methods (Bless
and Higson-Smith, 1995). (2) The goal, therefore, was to determine general trends
and patterns in the perceptions of the participants, rather than to achieve an in-
depth understanding of the phenomenon (like is possible in participant observation
and lengthy interviews, for instance). The type of questions asked are more of the
what and how kind than the why kind (although an attempt was made to ask the
latter as well). The most appropriate research method, therefore, was deemed to be
the survey questionnaire.
The rst steps in designing the questionnaire involved wide consultation. I held
discussions with experts in the elds of African languages and applied linguistics,
especially on topics such as language policy, language variation and language
learning. I interviewed teachers and examiners of English and African languages.
After I had written the rst draft of the questionnaire I consulted a statistician to
ensure that the design was appropriate for easy data-capturing and the statistical
analysis which I had anticipated. I held a workshop with ve recent high school
nishers who studied XL1 and ESL while at school. Together, we read through and
answered each question on the questionnaire with the aim of conrming its rele-
vance and comprehensibility.
The following eight categories of questions were included in the 80-item ques-
tionnaire: (1) demographic information, (2) work routines, (3) in-class processes:
teaching, materials, activities, (4) Xhosa literacy, (5) Xhosa varieties, (6) contact
with English, (7) status of Xhosa at school, and (8) status of Xhosa after school. For
the purposes of this article, with its focus on the role and status of English and
Xhosa in education, only a selection of these questions are relevant (see the Appendix
for the questions, with their original numbering, selected for this article).
504 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

The language used in the questions and the format of each question-type had to be
such that school students would easily be able to answer the questions. This required
consultation with language teachers, researchers, appropriate published research
literature and XL1/ESL students. Finally, once the questionnaire had reached a
near-nal draft, it was completely translated into Xhosa. This process resulted in
minor adjustments to the English version. Both versions of the questionnaire where
then proofread to ensure accuracy of the language and of the translation. English
and Xhosa questionnaires were stapled together. Respondents therefore received
both versions, and had the choice of answering in either English or Xhosa.
The target schools were high schools in the Eastern Cape (EC) and Western Cape
Provinces (WC) where XL1 and ESL were taught as subjects to the same students.
The ocial medium of instruction in the schools is English, although it is widely
known and has been reported (Peires, 1994) that much code-switching takes place
between English and Xhosa. It was decided to divide schools into three groups:
Small-Town schools (from towns such as Kei Road, Mount Coke and Hanover in
the EC), Large-Town schools (from towns such as Grahamstown, Somerset East
and Bisho in the EC) and Metropolitan schools (from Cape Town, Khayalitsha and
Langa in the WC, and Zwide, Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in the EC, for example).
Table 1 shows the number of schools in each region and the number of respondents
from those schools.
Within these schools Grade 11 students, all of whom were mother-tongue Xhosa
speakers, were the respondents. Most learners were the appropriate age for Grade
11 (69% in the 1618 year old range), and the female to male ratio was 60:40. All
questionnaires were completed by the respondents during a 2-week period in the rst
semester of the academic year. Data was captured from all acceptable questionnaires
(N=2825) onto a computer spreadsheet programme. The statistics involved calcu-
lating frequencies of responses to each question and converting these into percen-
tages. Relevant ndings are presented and discussed in the next section.

Table 1
Number of schools and respondents in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces

Number of respondents

Eastern Cape
Small town (6 schools) 360
Large Town (4 schools) 351
Metro (3 schools) 516
Total (13 schools) 1227

Western Cape
Metro (13 schools) 1598
Total (13 schools) 1598

Eastern and Western Cape

Totals (26 schools) 2825
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 505

5. Findings and discussion

5.1. Xhosa and English as school subjects

Of the 2825 respondents, 35% studied two languages as school subjects (Xhosa
and English), and 65% studied three languages; the third language being Afrikaans.
In order to matriculate from high school, students need to include two languages in
their selection of six subjects (for other possible school subjects see, amongst others,
those listed in Question 48 in the Appendix). The high proportion doing Afrikaans,
an unpopular language choice for a range of political reasons (Satyo, 1993), is due to
the wide availability of resources for teaching the language, remnants of the apartheid
educational system.
Questions 1113 (see Fig. 1) compare Xhosa and English in terms of three vari-
ables: which language as a subject students nd easier at school, which subject they
enjoy more, and which language will be more useful to them one day when they have
nished school. For all three variables English is rated higher, especially usefulness
after school (89% compared to 11%). This nding seems to support many of the
comments made in the literature on African languages in education (see Kamwan-
gamalu, 1997; Sarinjeive, 1999) which suggest that African language speakers per-
ceive English to be the language of progress and opportunity.
What is surprising, is the nding for Question 11. One would expect the students
to nd their mother tongue easier to study than an additional language. The reason
for this nding probably has something to do with the way that Xhosa is taught (too
much of an emphasis on structural rather than communicative activities), and the
variety of Xhosa taught (a focus on a traditional, standard variety rather than a
more urbanised, informal variety). The ESL syllabus (Department of Education,

Fig. 1. Comparison of Xhosa and English with regard to diculty as a school subject, enjoyment as a
subject and usefulness after school (Question 1113).
506 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

1995), on the other hand, states quite clearly the communicative importance of the
content covered and the teaching methods utilised. Similar reasons could explain the
dierence in levels of enjoyment between studying Xhosa and studying English
(Question 12).
Questions 1921 ask respondents to consider the status of Xhosa at school. 76%
believe that it is important to study Xhosa at school. This is a high percentage, and
may surprise those who believe that school students who speak African languages
are not interested in studying their own languages and would prefer to concentrate
on English instead. Responses to Question 20 (see Fig. 2) show the reasons why
respondents feel it is important to study Xhosa: 69% say that Xhosa is the language
of their people, expressing a strong relationship between language and identity (as a
member of a community or culture). Almost none of the students see any functional
value in Xhosa, however; only 8% believe that it will help them get a job and only
11% feel it has any value for further study (these low gures mirror the ndings for
Questions 13, see earlier, and 14, see later). These perceptions are contrary to those
of language planners in the country who, for the past decade, have been promoting
the idea that multilingualism in education and in the workplace should be a
resource, rather than a problem as it is often perceived to be by employers.
Findings shown in Fig. 3 (Question 21) further support the respondents percep-
tion, however, and also conrm a commonly articulated belief that speakers of
African languages do not nd it necessary to study their mother tongue at school
because they can already speak it. This belief quite clearly ignores concerns with
functional literacy in African languages, the low percentages for literacy acts in
Xhosa in Fig. 5 corroborate this.
A relatively low number of respondents indicate in Question 21 that they would
rather learn English (22%). This nding suggests that language choice for these
students is not simply a matter of Xhosa or English. This idea emerges again in the
LOLT debate (see later) and will be considered in my concluding remarks.

Fig. 2. Reasons for the importance of studying Xhosa at school (Question 20).
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 507

Fig. 4 shows the ndings for Questions 2224, questions which explore varietal
dierences between Xhosa spoken at home and with friends and that studied at
school. There are, without doubt, dierences (as has been pointed out by Gough,
1998 and Nomlomo, 1999, for example). Responses to Question 22 show that 86%
of the respondents agree (44% strongly) that home and school varieties are dierent.
Responses to Question 24 show that 81% of the respondents disagree that the variety
of Xhosa studied at school is the same as the Xhosa they speak with their friends.
The reasons seems to be that the school variety is a traditional standard form (or
deep Xhosa, as it is referred to by the students), as shown by responses to Question

Fig. 3. Reasons why it is not necessary to study Xhosa at school (Question 21).

Fig. 4. Varietal dierences between Xhosa spoken at home and with friends, and the variety studied at
school (Questions 2224).
508 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

23 (76% of the respondents believe that this is so). This deep variety is typically
associated with older Xhosa speakers who live in rural areas; images of which are
unpopular (or even embarrassing) with younger speakers from towns and cities who
see themselves as progressive, living modern lives in urban areas.
It is probably true that some of the negative perceptions of teaching and learning
of Xhosa found in this study stem from these varietal dierences. An issue with
regard to the language as subject debate is the growing emphasis on acknowledging
language varieties as a resource in the educational process rather than the exclusive
focus and dominance of one standard variety (Janks & Ivanic, 1992; Young, 1988).
This notion has typically been discussed in terms of legitimising indiginised varieties
of the standard codes (see Alexander, 1989 and Ndebele, 1987, for earlier thinking in
this regard). However, pertinent policy decisions and syllabus content lag far behind
these ideas. Responses to Question 26, for example, which also focuses on varieties
of Xhosa, but this time the varieties encountered in the set literature, show that 68%
(20% strongly) of the respondents agree that the literature is written in deep lan-
guage (with 24% disagreeing, only 6% strongly). For many of the respondents, it
appears that they are reading Xhosa as a second dialect, for some perhaps to the
extent that they are reading a foreign language.
Questions 1415 (see Fig. 5) show respondents perceptions of the domains in
which Xhosa and English will be useful when they have nished school. Except for
the informal activity of talking with friends, English rates higher than Xhosa in each
case. Usefulness in the workplace and for studying further are the areas where the
biggest dierences are evident. The irony of this ndings is that for many of the
respondents, particularly those in rural areas, it is Xhosa which they will be using at
work. This nding, however, clearly shows the higher instrumental or functional
value attached to English.

Fig. 5. Domains in which Xhosa and English will be useful after school (Questions 1415).
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 509

5.2. LOLT and code-switching

Questions 4647 (see Fig. 6) compare respondents preferences for either Xhosa or
English as the LOLT for all subjects at school. Only 16% agree that Xhosa should
be the LOLT, whereas 52% of the respondents believe that it should be English.
What is surprising is that the percentage showing support for English is not very
high. From ndings discussed earlier (see Questions 1115, for example), and from
the numerous debates about LOLT and mother-tongue education in the literature
and policy documents, one would expect much more support for English as LOLT;
37% disagree that English should be the LOLT (this is, of course, considerably
lower than the 75% who feel that Xhosa should not be the LOLT). It would be
interesting to nd out exactly what ideas students have about the LOLT policy in
their schools; perhaps they have in mind a dual- or parallel-medium arrangement (as
suggested by Heugh, 1995, and others). Further research should explore this question.
Questions 4849 ask respondents to indicate whether Xhosa and English should
be used as the LOLT for a range of school subjects. Except for Biblical Studies
(which is a subject more closely related to ones community life and possibly per-
ceived to be less of an academic subject than the others), English is preferred for all
subjects (see Fig. 7), and substantially so. The percentages indicating Xhosa LOLT
preferences are very low indeed; even Biblical Studies is below 50%.
Questions 1618 address the issue of English use in the Xhosa language classroom.
An issue that has emerged consistently relating to the domain of LOLT is that of
code-switching as an educational resource (Adendor, 1993; Myers-Scotton, 1992;
Peires, 1994). This is typically discussed in terms of switching between English (at
present the dominant language of learning amongst Africans) and an African lan-
guage. In practice such mixing appears to be the norm in African schools. Far from
seeing code-switching in a negative light, as has been done in the past, an emerging

Fig. 6. Respondents preferences for Xhosa or English as language of learning and teaching (LOLT) for
all subjects at school (Questions 4647).
510 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515

Fig. 7. Respondents preferences for Xhosa or English as language of learning and teaching (LOLT) for
selected subjects (Questions 4849).

doctrine is that it facilitates learning in the educational process. However, one would
expect that since the student participants in this study are in XL1 classes and that their
mother tongue is Xhosa there would be no need for the teacher to use English at all
(Nkondo, 1982 has pointed out that using English is a persistent problem with the teaching
of African languages at all levels). 41% of the respondents indicate that their teachers use
English in the classroom at least some of the time (Question 16), and 81% of the
respondents believe that they should not (Question 18). 23% indicated that when teachers
do use English it is for instructional purposes (Question 17); perhaps the teachers are
carrying over the English-LOLT policy from other subject teaching into the Xhosa class.

6. Concluding remarks

The perceptions of language students warrant attention from both their teachers
and language-in-education planners, including school administrators and repre-
sentatives in the Departments of Education at provincial and state level. Theirs is a
voice which is often ignored in decision-making about educational matters; their
place is seen to be the receiving-end of other peoples deliberations. Rudduck (1991,
p. 30), for instance, refers to ignoring students views as our blind spot. However,
as this study has shown, they certainly have something to say.
In order for students perceptions to be taken into account, that is, before inter-
vention can take place, we need to discover what they are. One way of getting their
voices heard is for teachers and researchers to gather data and to report their nd-
ings in an accessible form to those who have the power to make nal decisions about
policy and its implementation. This study is one example of this process.
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 511

Analysis of the data obtained has highlighted a number of implications for tea-
chers and policy makers, each of which is an area which deserves further research. In
particular, further studies could investigate the relative status of Xhosa and English
as school subjects. The students in this study have indicated that, for a range of
variables, they have a preference for English, in spite of the nding that 76% of
them think that Xhosa should be studied at school (see Question 19). Why is this the
case? And why is it that Xhosa is not seen as an important language for life after
school? One would expect that, with a developing democratic political dispensation
in the country, the advantages of speaking an African language would be huge. The
answer, however, does not appear to be as straightforward as an English-only
option. In Question 21, only 22% of the respondents said that one reason for not
studying Xhosa is that they would rather learn English. Why this apparent con-
tradiction? What sort of language-subject combinations do the students have in
mind?
Perhaps one reason for their feelings of ambivalence towards Xhosa has to do
with the variety of Xhosa taught at school. Why do syllabus designers and teachers
insist on teaching a traditional (deep) dialect of Xhosa, a variety which the stu-
dents struggle to speak and understand, and with which they do not identify? Stu-
dents could be asked which varieties they nd more appealing and appropriate, and
why. The implications of their answers for materials and textbook writers and for
teaching and assessment are obvious.
Similar questions to those above can be asked about the LOLT policies operating in
schools. It is not simply a matter of either Xhosa or English, as responses to Questions
4647 have shown. Do students have their own ideas for a LOLT policy? What would it
look like and how would it compare to the models proposed by language-in-education
commentators such as Alexander (1995), Heugh (1995) and Luckett (1993)?
Finally, this study used a survey questionnaire as its main data-collection instru-
ment. There are limitations with this sort of research method, most noticeably when
trying to answer why-type questions, the type of questions I have proposed earlier.
To answer them, further research would necessarily be more qualitative. By this I
mean that researchers need to go into schools and into XL1/ESL classrooms to
observe what is actually happening there. They need to talk to the students: indivi-
dually and in groups. This study has supplied a number of answers to very impor-
tant questions, but these answers need to be explored further. Talking to students
will enable researchers and teachers doing action research to delve much deeper into
their thoughts about language teaching and language-in-education policy and their
proposals for any changes they may recommend. A democratic, multilingual policy
is a strong incentive for such research.

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by a grant from the Pan South African Language Board
(PANSALB) for which I express my thanks.
512 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515
 G.P. Barkhuizen / System 30 (2002) 499515 513

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