Using critical language awareness pedagogy to leverage home languages in multilingual South Africa

This article deals with critical language awareness (CLA) pedagogy in the context of multilingualism in South Africa which has 11 official languages. For the majority of our black South African learners English is a second English and for some of them they even regard it has their home language as they only speak their African language to their elders. Against this backdrop, I will look at three examples of CLA pedagogy in this article. Two examples are taken from studies conducted at the same univesity in Cape Town, South Africa from two different researchers. The other example is from a multilingual spelling bee competition that took place at a school in one of the provinces in South Africa. The implications of these three examples are strategies that teachers in South Africa can use in their classrooms. In addition, the examples used in this article also encourages learners to embrace and learn on their various home languages in the classroom. Finally, I believe that more schools should encourage critical language awareness pedagogy in South Africa.