Teaching English in Africa

Did you know that there are around eleven different languages spoken in South Africa ?

Well, I certainly didn’t but that is something I soon found out on my recent study visit to our partner school, Meetsetshehela Secondary School , in South Africa . I was lucky enough to accompany two other colleagues on this amazing visit and we certainly had the experience of a life time!

As an English teacher at Benton Park I was bursting with teaching ideas I hoped to use whilst on our visit. On our arrival I was overwhelmed by our warm greeting and at the appreciation the learners gave to me as an English teacher. English is the official language of South Africa even though Africans and Sutu are the predominant language of the learners. Therefore their understanding and use of English astounded and impressed me immensely! I quickly realised that for the learners to use their education to the full they had to be accomplished in written and spoken English. As someone who can speak only broken French and German, the thought of having to experience every lesson in one of these languages and then sit exams in it, gave me an idea of how hard and accomplished the learners in South Africa are.

To encourage and develop their use if English, I delivered several different lessons and activities. Here is just a taster of some of those activities:

Scrabble rabble!

Above the most popular activity was playing interactive scrabble. The learners were separated into teams and were given a selection of pre-prepared letters and the game unfolded according to the rules. They loved encouraging one another, agreeing on words to create and securing their understanding and spelling of new words. The game lasted a long time but at no time did the focus or enthusiasm of the learners wane.

Future of teaching?

To secure their use of auxiliary verbs and verb forms we carried out a verb sorting game where learners had to choose which column their post-it-note verb needed to go: past, present or future? We secured our understanding of verbs and adverbs by using drama to act out and guess the verb with an accompanying adverb.

Accomplished Acrostic Poetry!

To help the learners use and appreciation of the English language, we created some Africa acrostic poems. To begin with we thought of an adjective we could use to describe or relate to Africa which began with the consecutive letters. We then added a noun which the adjective could be describing then built up this poetic description by considering what the noun could be doing and how by using verbs and adverbs. For the more gifted learners we tried to encourage the use of poetic techniques such as alliteration and rhyme. Once completed the learners read them aloud to the rest of the class with a focus on spoken aspect and pronunciation.

We had an amazing time and learnt a lot as teachers! We are hoping that some South African learners can benefit from the experience of learning English in our country through proposed future exchanges – I can’t wait!

Mrs Dunne

Benton Park School
Harrogate Road Rawdon
Leeds
LS19 6LX