Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Teaching Afrikaans

I have found it a bit of a challenge - this whole Afrikaans thing. In fact I have not addressed it all since Lulu came home 2 months ago.

I grew up in a dual-medium home; I went to an Afrikaans primary school for 4 years and I have always just understood the language. I do not speak it very often anymore but am completely competent in the language in terms of teaching it to a primary school level.

It is almost laughable to me that I have managed to raise three complete and utter 'rooinekkies' - they are clueless! My Grade 6 (formally educated) child can change a sentence from present tense to future or past tense but cannot tell you what the sentence actually means. Crazy.

Anyyyyyway, the point of my little rant is that I am scouring the net for afrikaans television programs from the 70's, 80's and 90's. It is generally well accepted that children learn best by engaging in a language regularly and what better way than to get them hooked on some fun programming.

They may well baulk at watching Liewe Heksie, Orkney Snork Nie, Nommer Asseblief and Trompie as it will be completely foreign but I am hoping that it will begin to instill in them a love for this quirky, descriptive language.


3 comments:

  1. My matric Afrikaans teacher (who taught us for std 9 and 10) got us all hooked on Egoli (Afrikaans was my home language anyway for a long time) but for some of the hardcore english chicks in my class - it was fab talking about a soap opera while learning a language.

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  2. I would not know how to even start. I had to do it at school and later had Afrikaans flat mates so spoke it when I lived with them but now..... Yikes! I can understand it but don't ask me to read or speak it.

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  3. Good luck with the language teaching. I on the other hand struggle like you with English with my kid. We are raw Afrikaans speaking people :)

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