Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Primary and Secondary Schools in Zimbabwe: Policy, Practice and Limitations

Abstract

According the 1987 Education Act as Amended in 2006, the Minister of Education may authorise the teaching and learning of foreign languages. This provision of the Education Act raises concerns in terms of the adequacy of the clauses that promote foreign language teaching in Zimbabwe. Through critical discourse analysis of the Zimbabwean language-in-education policy, this article examines the adequacy or lack thereof of the policy provisions relating to foreign language teaching and their implications on practice and the limitations they have in view of foreign language teaching in Zimbabwe. I argue that the clauses relating to foreign language teaching and learning are weak, yet foreign language teaching and learning serves important nationist purposes. These clauses have made foreign language teaching and learning a privilege of the elite, and this curtails upward social mobility of the less privileged who do not learn these foreign languages and cannot afford to be educated in the elite schools and colleges which offer these languages.