Challenges and solutions to the mastery of the Shona orthography in schools

Abstract

The interconnection between language and culture makes language inherently linked to the society in which it is taught and learnt. In response to this affinity, learners are allowed to use a language that is relevant and sensitive to their socio-educational contexts. As the study revealed, Shona language teaching and learning in Zimbabwean secondary schools rarely brings the interconnection between language and culture in pedagogically inspired ways. This qualitative case study set out to problematize how the dissonance between language and culture causes some learners to commit orthographical errors when they write at school using the prescribed academic Shona language. The Shona language used to write at school is a product of standardisation of all the Shona dialects. Unfortunately, this Standard Shona has a heavy Zezuru bias making it somewhat culture free as regards all the other dialects that each did not feed much into the standard language used at school. The Zezuru bias has also resulted in dialects having a held-down functional space in education where the use of one’s dialect language or the home language is penalisable. There is need to correct the mismatch between home language and school language. The researcher engaged with academics, teachers and learners through interviews and questionnaires in trying to find out possible causes of errors learners commit when writing at school. Apart from interviews, the researcher carried out documentary analysis of adverts to find out how they can be causes of poor mastery of orthography by learners. It is the emphasis on standard Shona among other reasons, which causes low scores in composition. Learners lose many marks allotted to orthography because of mother tongue interference.