English language teaching in schools: do teachers offer what the students really need?

Abstract

For sometime now, the overall pass rate and performance of matriculants in the matric examination have been widely questioned by education stakeholders in South Africa. Whilst some have questioned the competence of the matriculants, others have argued that the matriculants can not be held sorely responsible for their shortcomings as they are not examined in their mother tongue and many of their educators are either unqualified or under-qualified. Tertiary institutions on their part, have come up with 'bridging programmes' aimed at helping their first year students cope with the rigours of academic literacy and academic life in general. This article argues that the language component of any bridging programme should be carefully thought about and planned as the students are from diverse language backgrounds and as such come to such programmes with varying language abilities and competencies.