Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

560 Part 7: Language and Education
complaints the ‘useless’ CELS/MUST program, which moreover they
claimed was not even a properly registered program.
Michael asks the students: did you see the poster? How did you feel?
Shocked? Disturbed? Angry? Confused? He goes on to assure them
CELS/MUST (aka CEMS) is in fact registered and approved and that
students have already successfully graduated from the program in
2005, 2006, and 2007. This opens up a longer discussion with the students
about the principles and accomplishments of the program,
including a critical reading of the PASMA poster. Delinah asks, ‘why
do they say it’s useless?’ and Michael replies: ‘We don’t know. PASMA
stands for Pan-Africanism and Black consciousness; how can you
advocate that and not support African languages?’ (fi eldnotes, July
31, 2008)
The socially sensitive pedagogy (McKay), or humanizing pedagogy
(Kamwangamalu), enacted daily in CEMS classes encompasses not only
critical metalinguistic awareness and acceptance of the communicative
repertoires students bring to the class, but also a concern for students’
access to the academic literacies and professional identities they need in
order to become empowered social actors – locally in Limpopo, nationally
in South African society and indeed globally as citizens of the world. In
terms of the continua of biliterate development, it is a pedagogy that seeks
to build students’ oral and written, receptive and productive language
and literacy skills in their L1, L2 and indeed all the language varieties,
modes and modalities at their disposal. This pedagogy is evident in practices
we have already identifi ed in the Limpopo CEMS program, illuminated
by insights from this volume’s chapters – fl uid and fl exible use of
languages, curricular content drawing on students’ lived experiences and
identities as well as academic scholarship, and ‘regular chances to hear
and interact with successful program graduates who [return to] share
accounts of the successes and diffi culties they [continue] to face, helping
younger participants realize that the demands for persistence and hard
work [are] relevant’ (McGroarty, citing Abi-Nader’s 1990 study of a model
program for Spanish-speaking high schoolers in the United States).
CEMS’ pedagogy of awareness, acceptance and access recapitulates
themes that have cropped up again and again in the pages of this volume.
In addition to calls for critical language awareness (Alim, Janks, Pennycook)
and intercultural awareness (Kubota), Siegel highlights the awareness
approach as the most promising of the ways pidgins and creoles have been
incorporated into schooling; and Duff points out that ‘meta-awareness of
how ... key speech events work, at the level of grammar and genre/register,
... [assists] students who cannot easily induce such content or conventions
on their own’, or who have access to fewer symbolic and material
resources within their new educational and linguistic communities, even