Ndiyavuya, Ngiyajabula, Ke thabile , Ek is excited!!!!!!!!
Yes, all the above words mean that I am very excited in different African languages i.e. isiXhosa (my mother-tongue), isiZulu, Sesotho and then I tried Afrikaans but Oops! Was not quite successful!
Language professionals such as Linguists and Speech-Language Therapists (SLT) have a special name for what I did. It is called code-mixing (you may even hear code–switching depending who you talk to). I mixed Afrikaans (Ek is) and English (excited) in the sentence. Nothing fancy about it! Bilinguals (people who speak more than one language) do it all time. As you keep reading this blog each week we can talk in more depth about these bilinguals, who they are, what they say, how they say it and why? So, keep plugged in!
Now that I have my excitement out of the way let me unpack my reasons for being so thrilled. They are two pronged i.e. firstly that this blog and website are finally off the ground (it has been my dream for a prolonged period!) and secondly I have just attended the most interesting virtual conference on ‘Mastering Evaluations with Students from Diverse Backgrounds’ The blog and website’s main aim is to fulfil my MAD principle (Making A Difference). Difference for whom? Empower, educate and support parents, educators and therapists
i.e. Educators: struggling with pupils from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds in their classrooms
Parents: uncertain as to how to support their bilingual children and which language to use or not use
Therapists: how to best assess and support bilinguals, which resources to use and how
The above sounds like an incredibly mammoth task, which is why I was excited
about the conference
The conference confronted ( No! its my first blog so I will tone it down!); it addressed all the above but because it was Speech Language Pathology (SLP) conference it focused on the SLT’s role in:
How the SLT critiques assessment tools for conscious and unconscious bias (Can you believe it they included the CELF [A commonly used test in the profession] in detail!)
More accurate diagnosis of developmental language disorders in populations from CLD backgrounds
Considerations for difference
Difference vs Disorder
Going beyond testing tools (My apologies for getting controversial here but necessary!)
On that controversial note let me say goodbye for now and hope that you will be on the lookout for my next blog as we navigate these muddy yet interesting waters pertaining to CLDs. I am also looking forward to hearing from you on topics introduced or ones that you would like to be addressed!
Regards
Thandeka Mdlalo