Consistent with its resolve to produce multilingual journalists, CPUT has over the past few years integrated several of South Africa’s official languages into the curriculum.
IsiXhosa and Afrikaans are offered to Journalism students as second languages to empower them to be able to conduct interviews and write in these languages.
“The reason behind this initiative is the fact that the Western Cape has primarily isiXhosa and Afrikaans speakers, therefore it is advantageous for any journalist to know these languages,” says isiXhosa lecturer Linda Mkaza.
She says once journalists are more conversant in another South African language (other than English) they will offer greater diversity of sources and social experience in news reporting and research.
The students are taught communication skills such as speaking, reading, writing, listening in these languages as well as journalistic skills of research, writing articles and conducting interviews.
The subjects also aim to develop the languages and that requires the lecturers to develop terminologies for journalism.
“All these tasks are mainly to expose students to the industry and also make them conscious of the language and the need to develop the language, particularly for media industry.
