I TENOR I
4.2 Triangulating Data from Other Sources
4.2.1 Interviews with Teachers
In seeking an explanation for the experience of writing summed up above it is important to investigate what teachers have to say about the teaching of writing in the school, and to examine their schooling and their training as teachers. Interviews with teachers about their LLHs and, particularly their training as teachers, provide a number of important insights into the writing experiences of learners as revealed in their LLHs. Written LLHs from teachers indicated very similar experiences to those recorded by the learners in this investigation:
In Primary school there was no free writing. From std four to std six we were given copies of three letters and one composition. There was always one formal letter for ordering books and two informal letters. One to a friend and another one
to parents. We had to memorise these letters and be able to reproduce one of them during the exams, same with the composition.
After a topic we were required to indicate a sort of planning of which our teachers did not lead us well in that aspect. One would divide a composition into paragraphs any how. Logical strategies were not introduced.Most of the time our teachers playing an active role whilst teaching. Some displaying their accuracy in pronounciation. Even when you tried to interfere the teacher's responses were so negative.
The first interview to be analysed is that ofLungisi because his LLH follows the most prevalent pattern of the majority of staff members; from school, through teachers' training colleges, to teaching in the school. Lungisi is a teacher at the school who has lived in this community since early childhood when his family moved there from Soweto. He did his primary and secondary schooling there except for his last two years when he went to another school because the community school at that stage only went up to standard eight (grade 10). He subsequently has taught there since graduating from teachers' training college. What is revealing is that as far as the development ofwriting was concerned his school career closely mirrored those of the learners interviewed. He remembers no extended writing in the primary school beyond the writing of short paragraphs for Zulu and English on topics such as 'My first day at school', 'My school', 'My teacher'. In content subjects they only wrote short answers and filled in answers in blank spaces. Their seemed little that was motivating about his experience of writing at school. When asked
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whether he remembered any thing good or bad about his experience of writing at school he replied: 'I can't say that there is this that I think it was good or that was bad, I was just doing it ... I thought I had to do it in order to succeed at school,so I was just doing it'. In high school the range oftopics focused on narrative/descriptive writing, 'we were given some topics "The journey by train" you know, sometimes things that even if you have never traveled on a train (laughter) they give you that topic'. The process of writing in high school was similar to his experience in the primary school: '...you were given a topic. Right here's your topic, got to write "My first day at school", and the teacher would tell them that 'there is something called an introduction, in the introduction you must do this and this and this and through the body goes to the conclusion'.
While this provided some sort of guidance to the structure of narrative genre Lungisi said that there was little useful feedback after writing: 'we used to write these, submit them, get the mark...
you just got the essay back and that was the end' and he found this a demotivating experience, 'I
had not developed that interest in writing'. It was only in Biology that he experienced extended writing ofa different genre, namely explanations ofthings like kidney functions. The teacher gave them memoranda to compare to their answers and this provided some SOli of model for the students.
Dumisa went to a teachers' training college for his primary teacher's diploma and then later attended a correspondence training college to further his qualifications. In the former he remembers assignments for all the different subjects but again he felt that feedback was inadequate as they 'were focusing on the subject matter as such, not at, what can I say, writing as such' and there was no chance to rewrite on the basis of comments. In the correspondence training college lecturers provided comments and also provided guidelines at regional meetings.
However, what is interesting is the way he contrasts his university experience with that ofteacher training. Lungisi came to study for a B.A. degree at the local campus and did two courses, Learning, Language and Logic (3L) and Applied Language Studies (ALS) 110 which in different ways focused on academic writing development. 3L focused on the general development of students' communicative competence in an academic environment, including academic writing, while ALS 110 was a course which adopted a genre approach to the teaching of academic writing.
Lungisi's comments on these two courses indicated a keen awareness of the difference between his experience in these two courses and his previous experience.'It's different from my previous writing, you know maybe it's now because I'm now aware what is expected of me, what type of writing I must do, then I see the change ... I think ifIjust come here and do not do 3L I would be having a problem that I wouldn't know that I'm having'. He felt that his previous writing in teacher training was 'casual', and cited the process of redrafting after tutor comment on the first draft in both courses as crucial to the development of his 'awareness' of academic writing task demands. He stated that there should be courses like 3L and ALS for teacher training: 'I think if you could take all the teachers that are practising now that are at schools teaching now, if you can take those teachers teach them things like 3L, they will go back different teachers'. He stressed that it was the 'awareness ofthe importance of writing' which was not part of his teacher training expenence.
Mandla (Appendix 11), a senior history teacher, confirmed Lungisi's experience of teacher
training. He had been to an elite black high school near Pinetown in Natal where he was taught by English first language speakers. His comments on teacher training college are interesting in that, with this schooling background, he found the work too simple: 'Suddenly I came to where the college was taking care ofthe second language speakers and the assumption
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was that all folks weren't really used to writing, so we were going back to the basics.Itwas quite boring'. The types of writing they were asked to do, according to Mandla, 'would go back to the basics,telling us how to write a narrative ...They would go for those simple ones, and they would try and introduce us to discursive essays as well'. His criticism was that the work at the teachers training college was too simple, and that when he came to study at university there was no link between the types of tasks required at the two institutions. Thus it would seem that for many teachers their experience of writing in the teacher training would be one that replicated their experience of writing in school and would be characterised by limited feedback, little explicit teaching ofthe task demands ofdifferent genres and a focus on content rather than communicative effectiveness. Mand1a, commenting on teacher training colleges, stated that they were
...the worst case because they [teachers] come there with very little writing and go to colleges, they get taught even less so and then they go back and teach our own kids. I mean at the end of the day there will be a lot of people who are ill prepared,and who are not keen to write.
This to some extent explains the practices described by learners in the LLHs. Itseems that some teacher training institutions do not develop teachers' literacy skills sufficiently for them to be effective faci1itators of their learners' entry into academic, or schooled literacy. Langhan (1993) in his research into textbooks and their use in South African schools created a list of'indictments' for the situation he found.One ofthose listed was the teacher training colleges whom he indicted for producing teachers who had little knowledge of: content subjects; educationally sound methods of teaching and learning; and appropriate reading and writing skills (141).
Teachers made a number ofrevealing comments about the pressures that impacted on the teaching of writing at the school. Bongani commented on the effect of poverty,stating that as onereason why so little homework was done.'When you come home, there'sno spacewhere you can sit like this and look at your book ... Even if you want to write there is no space to write'. This comment
confirmed what one student said to me in response to a query about why she never did any homework. She travelled a long distance to get to the school because of the political violence in her area. The result was that she got up at about 5.30 am to catch two taxis to get to school and then only arrived home after school at about 5.00pm.She said that because she was the only girl in the house, she had to fetch the water, chop the wood, cook the dilU1er and wash up afterwards.
Only then could she start her homework under candlelight. Gladys also reported having to use candles to read by.
Both Bongani, a senior English teacher, and Mandla spoke ofthe effect oflarge classes. Bongani spoke of one year when he had five matric classes and one each in standard six and seven, totalling, by his estimation, about three hundred pupils. Mandla said that this was a reason for the lack of extended writing tasks, and the extensive use of short answer exercises, required by teachers. Both teachers related this strategy to pressures within the system, echoing the sentiments of the teacher who described the crunch-and-carry-on method as a means to satisfy authorities.
Mandla said teachers favoured short exercises because 'they can mark them very quickly, get them back to the pupils, and then give them the next exercise. So with the authorities they would be in the good books, but then pupils are going to lose out in the process'. Bongani, who was exceptional in the school in that he required his classes to write at least one letter and one essay a month, remembers a subject adviser criticising him for a lack of language exercises. Itseems from these interviews that the pressure teachers felt from educational authorities pushed them towards the types ofexercises that would stall their learners' writing development in order to fulfil syllabus requirements. Mandla highlighted another pressure oflarge classes,namely a focus on the successful students at the expense of the weaker ones: 'You would then see that in practice, in schools, with teachers attending to those who are showing signs of progress and then leaving the rest'. This minors Martin's (1989) argument that schools tend to favour those that have the best chance of succeeding, a case ofthe less advantaged students getting less and less ofwhat they need and the more advantaged getting more. There will be more discussion about teachers' responses to these pressures when syllabuses and teacher guides are analysed.