CHAPTER 2................................................................................................................................... 16
2.3 Understanding writing in the South African context
2.3.1 The SA writing curriculum
The CAPS was introduced in the Foundation Phase in 2012 and in the Intermediate
Phase in 2013. For each subject there is a separate CAPS document, which introduces the subject and provides the content and teaching plans, and assessment guidelines. This document acknowledges that although home language is supposed to be the language first acquired by the learners, many schools do not offer the home languages of all learners, so the labels HL and FAL refer to the required proficiency levels and not the necessarily the learners’ native languages (DBE, 2011a). What complicates this is that, in the same ‘English Home Language’ class, there may be learners for whom English is a Home Language, as well as those for whom English is not spoken at home and is only a First or Second or even Third Additional Language. However, they are required to meet HL proficiency levels. The following table shows the time allocation for each skill in the IP, for English HL.
Table 1: IP HL skills and time allocations
Skill Time Allocation per Two-week
Cycle (Hours) Listening and Speaking (oral) 2 hours
Reading and Viewing 5 hours
Writing and Presenting 4 hours
Language structures & Conventions 1 hour (but must also be integrated into the other language skills) (DBE, 2011a, p.14)
The English HL curriculum is packaged into the following skills: Listening and Speaking, Reading and Viewing, Writing and Presenting, and Language Structures and Conventions. The hours allocated for HL per two-week cycle in IP are divided as follows: Listening and Speaking two hours; Reading and Viewing five hours; Writing and Presenting four hours; and Language Structures and Conventions one hour. This allocation suggests the importance that the SA curriculum places on Writing and Presenting but prioritises Reading and Viewing by allocating an hour more to the development of this skill. Reading and Viewing and Listening and Speaking need to be allocated the same amount of time to ensure adequate development in each of these complementary skills.
The HL curriculum adopts the text-based and the communicative approaches as its theoretical underpinnings. The CAPS states: “a text-based approach explores how
texts work…also involves producing different kinds of texts for particular purposes and audiences…informed by an understanding of how texts are constructed” (DBE, 2011a, p.12). This approach is also known as the genre-based approach and is discussed in greater detail in section 2.4.3 below. According to the CAPS “a communicative approach suggests that when learning a language, a learner should have an extensive exposure to the target language and many opportunities to practise or produce the language by communicating for social or practical purposes” (DBE, 2011a, p.13). This means that the teacher needs to create opportunities that will maximise the learners use of English in authentic situations, which can be achieved by group seating, role plays or whole class discussions. It must be noted that CLT has been criticised for emphasising the function of the language over the structure of the language which may result in learners have gaps in their knowledge about the formal aspects of the language (Swan, 1985). Further to this, Ridge (1992) asserts that the lack of emphasis on the teaching of grammar could result in learners producing grammatically incorrect utterances in the target language, which, in terms of CLT, is acceptable if the receiver of the message is able to make sense of the message.
Despite these criticisms, CLT could be advantageous for ESL learners in the SA context. Firstly, the development of grammatical structures and forms has been integrated into the development of Listening and Speaking, Reading and Viewing and Writing and Presenting (DBE, 2011a) skills so learners will learn the rules of grammar in meaningful contexts. Secondly, ESL learners who may have little exposure to English in their personal contexts are provided with the opportunity to practice communication in the target language. Lastly, CLT promotes peer and group work so important skills required in the workplace such as teamwork, negotiation and compromise are developed. Adding to this, if one considers SA’s segregated past, having learners from different backgrounds, cultures and race group work in pairs and groups could promote understanding, tolerance and respect.
An overview of the skills, content, strategies and sub-skills is provided followed by a summary of text types that learners should be taught to write in the IP (DBE, 2011a, pp19, 29-31). This list includes narrative and descriptive essays, personal and official letters, curriculum vitae, diaries, e-mails, invitations, obituaries, directions, procedures, advertisements, personal recounts, dialogues, reviews and newspaper and magazine
articles. An explanation of the purpose, text structure and language features for each text type is also included. A breakdown of the length of texts for HL that must be produced by the learners is also presented—for example, an essay in Grade 6 must be 140–150 words and 4–6 paragraphs long (DBE, 2011a, p.32). Text length and the number of words that learners need to know in each grade are the only progression that learners are expected to make from Grades 4 to 6, which is concerning as the complexity of writing activities that learners complete needs to increase as learners progress through the grades (Graham & Perin, 2007).
What follows next are the teaching plans for Grades 4–6 (DBE, 2011a, pp36-87).
There is a separate set of plans for each grade (Grade 4: pp36-53; Grade 5: pp54-71;
Grade 6: pp72-87). The lesson plans are further divided into terms (Term 1–4) and then into two-week cycles (Week 1–2 to Week 9–10). This means that learners need to engage in listening, speaking, reading, writing and language and vocabulary development activities based on different genre every two weeks. A possible challenge could arise for teachers in terms of time to develop adequately writing, as they are required to engage with each element of the writing cycle, and explicitly teach the genre. The CAPS goes some way in addressing this as it prescribes that teachers use the same type of text to develop listening and reading skills prior to the learners completing a writing activity, thereby exposing learners to the genre. However, the allotted four hours is still insufficient for learners to produce a text using the stages of the writing cycle and certainly does not allow time for feedback and revision activities after the teacher marks the writing.
The plans are divided into the four skills: and explain the subskills that must be taught under each skill over a two-week cycle. Thus, at any given time, it is expected that all schools will be engaged in the same work, as laid out in the CAPS. However, this expectation of the CAPS is not necessarily realistic due to differences in the learners’
needs, the pace at which learners progress and schools’ extra-curricular calendars.
Adding to this, the assumption made by CAPS is that all learners are at the same level and require the same level of support so will progress at the same pace, which is not the case. According to Howie et al (2017) learners from urban areas performed at a higher level than those from rural and township areas in the 2016 PIRLS assessment.
Thus, learners in rural areas will require more time and support to grasp concepts than
their counterparts learning in urban areas. This shortcoming of the CAPS could mean that learners progress to the next grade without sufficiently engaging with the concepts or fully meeting the objectives of the previous grade.
Following the lesson plans, assessment in HL is explained. A distinction is drawn between informal and formal assessment and the requirements for formal assessment are explained. For the recorded written component for Grade 6 in Term 1, the learners must write about family, friends, pets, favourite sport or current issues and a poem. In the second term, learners write an instructional text and, in this term, they write an examination which consists of three papers. Paper 3 comprises essays and transactional texts. For Term 3, they must write a short play script and a short story.
Finally, in Term 4, they write a report and, as with Term 2, in the examination they write Paper 3. In all four terms, each written piece is marked out of 30, but for Paper 3 the 30 marks is broken down into 10 marks for transactional texts and twenty marks for essays. All three papers in the final examination count for 25% of the learners’ final mark (DBE, 2011a, pp94-99). To obtain a pass in English HL in the IP, learners must achieve at least a level 4 rating, which means that they must not get less than 50%.
Noteworthy is that during the writing of Paper 3, learners do not follow the stages of the writing cycle. Instead, they are handed their examination, which comprises of instructions and writing topics and are given a time limit to complete their writing, the focus being on the product rather than the process. This could disadvantage them as the method of developing their writing skills during lessons differs from the examination. Thus, they will not benefit from planning, revising, drafting and peer editing before submitting their final product. Adding to this, teachers might be overwhelmed by the marking load especially because the writing has not been edited which could result in them not providing adequate feedback.