The University of Cape Town’s College of Accounting, concerned by high drop-out rates, has developed English, Xhosa, and Zulu videos to teach financial and accounting concepts to second-language black students.<\/p>\n
Adding up numbers, it seems, is much easier in your home language.<\/p>\n
The videos are between four and 10 minutes long and are available free on the learnaccounting.uct.ac.za website.<\/p>\n
They allow students to watch a lecture in Zulu or Xhosa while reading a script to help them learn the main financial terms in English.<\/p>\n
College Associate Professor Jacqui Kew said: “For many students there is a double translation process that should happen. They need to understand accounting concepts at the same time as interpreting nuances in English.”<\/p>\n
Kew said most black accounting students did not pass all subjects in their first year. This forced them to extend a four-year degree to five years, which increased the financial pressure on them.<\/p>\n
Lecturers from Walter Sisulu University present the Zulu and Xhosa videos.<\/p>\n
Get Smarter, an online education company, produced the videos, which can be downloaded and watched on cellphones.<\/p>\n
The company used graphics, animation and actors, including a ballerina, to explain concepts in an engaging way.<\/p>\n
Kew said: “Poor black students face many barriers at university, including language difficulties.”<\/p>\n
She said only 24% of chartered accountants were black and language difficulties led to many accounting students dropping out of university.<\/p>\n
The Finance and Accounting Services Sector Education and Training Authority funded the making of the instructional videos.<\/p>\n
The college hopes to extend the range to include Sotho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The University of Cape Town’s College of Accounting, concerned by high drop-out rates, has developed English, Xhosa, and Zulu videos to teach financial and accounting concepts to second-language black students. Adding up numbers, it seems, is much easier in your home language. The videos are between four and 10 minutes long and are available free … Continue reading “UCT discovers that English is a barrier to black students”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12267,6975,10983,12250,319,1585],"class_list":["post-17710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-english","tag-home-language","tag-second-language","tag-south-africa","tag-xhosa","tag-zulu"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17711,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710\/revisions\/17711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}