[Xmca-l] Re: "English" as a school subject

[Carol Macdonald]

Peter

In South Africa, all eleven of our official languages simply called English
Home Language, Afrikaans Home Language, siSwati Home Language, Sesotho Home
Language, etc. all have the same format as the English you describe.
However, this far, only Afrikaans has a highly developed Literature.(They
have had 90 years to do that.)  For Grade 12, there is Poetry, Drama and a
"setwork book" (a classic) for the Literature paper. Then there is a
language (grammar) paper and a essay, media-studies, advert etc. third
paper.

(There is a political reason for calling this Home Language.  If we call it
English First Language, we might have to called another subject English
Second Language, which is regarded is insulting.  Instead, we call ESL,
English as a First Additional Language, and then we also have English as a
Second Additional Language. Apart from French, Latin and German, lots of
students do three languages for Grade 12. (Just a little squib.))

I hope that helps.
Carol


On 16 August 2016 at 12:24, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> Hi, I'm writing mainly to my colleagues who are familiar with public
> school, pre-university (what we call K-12 in the US) education systems,
> with a question.
>
> In English-speaking nations, there is a school subject called "English"
> that involves the study of literature (much from English-speaking authors,
> rather than "world literature" which may have its own separate course),
> writing (or now, multimodal composing), and language study (of the English
> language, often in the form of grammar instruction). This subject is not
> ESL, EFL, TESOL, or other way of describing learning the language of
> English by speakers of other languages.
>
> My question: I know that in Russia there are school subjects of Russian
> literature and language; in the Netherlands there is the following:
> The Study Dutch Language & Literature (Dutch: Nederlandse Taal- en
> Letterkunde) can be found at each Dutch university. Formerly you studied
> linguistics and literature, from about 1975 a third component was
> introduced: Taalbeheersing (Dutch for language skills, especially writing
> and argumentation). Nowadays the studies have new names, like Dutch
> Language and culture
>
> Do other nations dedicate a school subject to this discipline (literature,
> writing, language study in L1 and generally nationalistic in curriculum)?
> If so, what is it called, and what does it comprise?
>
> Thx,Peter
>
>


-- 
Carol A Macdonald Ph.D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
alternative email address: tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za