Head of the Language Unit at Fundani CHED, is one of six language professionals across all South African universities who were offered funding by the Regional English Language Office (RELO) at the United States of America (USA) Embassy in South Africa to attend two conferences in the USA recently.

Dr Kabelo Sebolai attended two annual conferences in Portland, Oregon. The first conference was held by the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the second by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Both conferences were aimed at the professional development of language professionals with AAAL being research-oriented and the TESOL, being more teaching-inclined. “The value of these conferences, like any other academic conference, lies in the effort to keep language researchers and teachers up to speed on new developments in the field,” says Sebolai.

Sebolai, who is also an Institutional Language Coordinator at Fundani, was attending the AAAL for the first time. “I was impressed by a wide range of language related topics that the presentations focused on. This was truly enriching. So much was of interest to me that I wished the presentations did not run parallel so that I could attend all of them,” he continues.

“This is not possible, as you can imagine. Otherwise, the conference would take forever.”

This was the fourth time Sebolai attended TESOL, and he says it has always been a fulfilling conference too. “It is much bigger than AAAL probably because of its heavy focus on teaching. It is attended by both university lecturers and high school teachers. This is not the case with AAAL, which is attended by academics only, because of its heavy emphasis on research.”

The six language professionals were selected by RELO, on the “basis of their continued contribution to language education and teacher professional development in South Africa”. To Sebolai’s amazement, a lot of what was presented at AAAL dealt with the very issues “we are facing in South Africa in general and at CPUT specifically in the effort to advance multilingualism and to develop indigenous languages to become languages of teaching and learning”.

“There was a lot to learn from these. My selection for the opportunity is a prestigious recognition also of the work I am employed to do at CPUT.”

A trip to North America is always a great experience for Sebolai. He was once a Master’s student at Northern Arizona University and trips like these are always an opportunity to catch up with his former professors and classmates. “I met several of them at AAAL particularly. I should mention two of my former professors namely, Bill Grabe and Fredricka Stoller in particular who I also met at AAAL and who have always shown a keen interest in my contribution towards language development in South Africa.”

Sebolai adds that the two conferences were a great opportunity for networking.

Written by Aphiwe Boyce
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In an endeavour to implement the University’s policy of multilingualism, the Institutional Language Unit recently hosted a SWiP Project Workshop at Bellville Campus.

The SWiP (SADiLaR-Wikipedia-PanSALB) is a collaborative initiative by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR); the free encyclopedia (Wikipedia) and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB).

The project was officially launched on 20 September 2023 at the University of South Africa. While the SWiP launch event shone a spotlight specifically on isiNdebele to encourage the Ndebele people to actively participate in contributing content to Wikipedia, the SWiP project is aimed at promoting all South Africa’s indigenous languages online. It does so by bringing together communities of indigenous language users and giving them the skills to create and review content on Wikipedia. In doing so, they collectively increase their respective languages’ digital footprint.

The delegation included representatives from CPUT, Wikipedia and PanSALB.

Dr Kabelo Sebolai, Head: Language Unit, said they were asked by SADiLAR to be the hosts of the workshop and that they were among the 10 universities selected from the 26 to do this. On the first day of the workshop, Wikipedia delegate, Michael Graaf provided a presentation on:

• History of Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• The Wikimedia Community support and projects

On the second day of the workshop Graaf started with a recap from Day 1 which was followed by training in editing/improving an article, translating an article and article creation. Sebolai said the workshop was a success. He said: “We learned how to use Wikipedia for translations into and editing African languages. As part of language policy implementation, the bulk of the work we do in the language unit involves translation and editing.”

He enthused: “The workshop introduced us to strategies for language and writing development using Wikipedia. The strategies will be useful in our ongoing endeavour to implement the university’s policy of multilingualism”.

Written by Aphiwe Boyce
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The annual conference which serves as a platform for information and networking on language teaching matters and development profession was co-hosted by CPUT and the South African Association for Language Teaching (SAALT) at Breakwater Lodge in Cape Town.

These include language teaching matters such as new trends and developments, syllabi, publications, and activities related to the language teaching and development profession. Opening the two-day conference, Dr Xena Cupido, Director: Fundani CHED, welcomed the delegates at SAALT, celebrating 60 years of excellence in language teaching and learning in diverse contexts. “I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate SAALT on its diamond anniversary, what a beautiful way to celebrate the work that has been done over the many years.

“As CPUT we are particularly proud to be able to celebrate this milestone with you and to be given the opportunity to co-host this year’s gathering. It certainly underscores our shared commitment to academic and educational advancements in language teaching and developing indigenous languages as an academic and scientific language,” said Cupido.

She said the conference embarked on various discussions, presentations, and workshops and that the topics “deeply” resonate with CPUT's Vision 2030 to ensure that the language of instruction supports student learning as well as to promote a multilingual environment that recognises CPUT’s unique African identity and historic circumstances. “As an institution, our intent is to foster an inclusive and equitable environment that recognises the linguistic diversity of staff and students.”

In her keynote address, Prof Cynthia Marivate, the first Chief Executive Officer of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), addressed: The relationship and Influence of Teaching, Curriculum, and Learning Environments, with special reference to African Languages.

Her paper calls for the empowerment of teachers through basic research skills. She said: “The paper is proposing that when teachers are equipped with quality and quantity research skills even basically, this will make their participation in discussions of curriculum reviews or policy implementation meaningful,” said Marivate. Head of the Language Unit at Fundani CHED, Dr Kabelo Sebolai said the conference was very successful. Sebolai said for a few years before COVID-19, SAALT which used to be very strong previously, was starting to show signs of dwindling. “Its first face-to-face conference after COVID-19, held in Pretoria in 2023 was a great success by comparison to the one preceding it in 2019. If that conference (2019) brought SAALT back to life, this year’s conference added significantly to this revitalisation. The latter exceeded its set goals...”

He continued: “It feels really good to us at CPUT, given the hard work we put into making this conference a reality. We started preparing for it in January and continued to work hard on this until the very last day of the conference. We are very proud of ourselves and Fundani, particularly. The support we received from the office of the Director (Fundani) was amazing. Also, we received very positive feedback from the participants in general.”

Written by Aphiwe Boyce
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