Primary school teachers’ opinions of their ESL learners’ language abilities

Abstract

The language of learning and teaching in schools remains a problem in Africa, as well as in South Africa. In a research project primary school teachers at schools in four provinces in South Africa were asked to give their opinions about their learners’ language abilities in English as their second language which is used as the medium of instruction at the schools. The research project helped to shed light on some of the problems which ESL learners in primary schools, as well their teachers have to grapple with. The research results could be used to give direction as to which issues need to be investigated more, should a national research project be undertaken. The knowledge and expertise from people in various related fields of study such as Linguistics and Applied Linguistics could for instance be used when second language problems and especially problems with ESL are addressed in primary schools. Thus primary school teachers could be informed how to support learners to gain competent academic language proficiency in English as their language of instruction.