University Botswana Journals
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INTEGRATING DICTATION ACTIVITIES IN THE FRENCH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM IN BOTSWANA
Get PDFResearch has shown that learners of foreign languages can improve their language competences through dictation activities. However, due to its close association with the grammar-translation approach of teaching foreign languages, dictation is ignored in language classes since the abandonment of this approach. The paper argues that, despite being characterised as going against communicative and action-based approaches of teaching foreign languages, dictation activities have an important role to play in these approaches and can effectively help improve learners’ proficiency in all the language activities: reception, production, interaction and mediation in oral and written form. The paper also explores some practical ways of integrating these activities in foreign language classes and will give some examples of dictation activities.
 
A NOTE ON LARYNGEAL PULSING IN (SOME) VOICED STOPS
Get PDFThis paper presents an objective depiction of pulsing in the vocal folds during the
production of voiced sounds in a language. The depiction is made by means of the electro-laryngograph, an equipment which non-invasively monitors vocal fold activity and provides detailed presentation of the delicate activity of the vocal folds during speech. With regard to learning and teaching, the paper briefly mentions how information derived from the electro-laryngograph can be valuable in teaching corrective vocal pathology and also to people interested in learning foreign languages
SOME SETSWANA POLEMICAL ANTHROPONYMS
Get PDFThis paper discusses personal polemical names which name givers use to indirectly communicate their feelings and opinions, especially in conflict-laden situations in order to avoid direct confrontations. The paper draws from the field of socio-onomastics, a recent approach that studies names within the contexts of their societies. Socio-onomastics recognises that names are not mere linguistic entities that develop and exist in isolation; they result from interactions amongst people, their languages and their communities. The paper outlines the social situations under which Setswana polemical names are used. The data comprises 47 polemically motivated names categorised into eight related themes. These names are part of the data which was collected for a PhD thesis between May and August 2016 in the villages of Mahalapye and Molepolole in Botswana. The data was collected through questionnaires and oral interviews. The study reveals that Setswana personal names can be used to perform communicative and practical pragmatic functions of indirect conversational exchanges in addition to their primary role of identification
Lawful Coups and other Legal Developments in Zimbabwe in 2017 and 2018
Get PDFThis paper provides a commentary on some legal developments in Zimbabwe in 2017- 2018, at the end of the Mugabe Presidency and the ushering in of the Second Republic. It notes how a change of regime initially facilitated by the military was in court found to be legitimate and highlights some of the early legislative changes of the Second Republic.  
IMPROVING MINORITIES’ ACCESS TO PUBLIC SERVICES IN BOTSWANA: HOW CAN PUBLIC SERVICE INTERPRETING HELP?
Get PDFEffective communication between public service providers and users is critical in accessing public services and providing services that directly and positively affect the lives of people. The most important element for effective communication between service providers and users is a common language that can facilitate access to services and enhance the quality of the services received. Lack of such a language may either lead to users’ reluctance to access services or compromise the quality of the services they receive. Yet in Botswana, language is never incorporated into measures that improve public service access and quality of communication. Accordingly, this paper argues that the English and Setswana-only language ideologies that characterise Botswana’s linguistic landscape not only deny speakers of minority languages access to public services but, also, expose them to low- or poor-quality services. The paper recommends the implementation of Public Service Interpreting to help improve the situation
THE RHETORIC OF REBELLIOUS REPUBLICANISM: A HISTORY OF THE ILLEGAL COLONIAL OVERTHROW OF THE BRITISH CROWN
Get PDFThis paper focuses upon the Conference themes of nationalist identity and globalisation by scrutinising the oratory employed in three chronologically successive “declarations of independence” which seek to persuade an adversarial international audience of the justice of their country’s rebellion from the English monarchy. The English Civil War in the seventeenth-century resulted in the execution of King Charles I in 1649 and the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, a hugely controversial regicidal act that was defended in print two weeks later by the famous poet and polemicist John Milton in The tenure of kings and magistrates. Secondly, towards the end of the eighteenth-century the burgeoning American colony declared the first ever unilateral Declaration of independence (UDI) from the English Crown in 1776 in a famously eloquent document. Central to its justificatory argument is the promulgation of Natural Law that persuades the reader of the justice of the American cause. Finally, I shall consider the only other successful UDI from English colonial rule, that of Rhodesia in 1965. The Rhodesian Proclamation was immediately recognised as modelled on its American predecessor, but the failure of this country’s illegal bid for independence is mirrored in the rhetorical frigidity and barrenness of the document
THE USE OF THE MONOLINGUAL ENGLISH DICTIONARY IN BOTSWANA JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Get PDFThe study investigates dictionary use by leaners in Botswana junior secondary schools. It investigates when and how junior secondary school students encounter and use dictionaries and determine the kind of information they look up. The paper also evaluates teachers’ role in creating awareness of dictionary use. The study uses a survey to elicit information from two junior secondary schools in Thamaga and Francistown. The findings of the paper are that majority of students encounter a dictionary for the first time at primary school; that teachers in junior secondary schools do not teach dictionary education though many students have used electronic dictionaries previously and prefer them because they are quick and easy to use; and that many learners prefer a book dictionary because they do not have access to electronic dictionaries since gadgets like phones and laptops are not allowed in the school premises. In addition, the teachers indicate that they did not teach dictionary use because they were never trained on how to deliver dictionary education to students; that dictionary education is not well outlined in the school curriculum; and that although teachers do not offer dictionary education to students, they do recommend a dictionary to students when the need arises during class
Batswana: A New Perspective on the Origin of the Stem -tswana in the Name
Get PDFThe history of ethnic Batswana and their migration through the Eastern Bantu stream from present dayCameroun, the Great Lakes, the Zambezi valley and Limpopo River into what is now Botswana has beenwritten on extensively. There have been many research studies on Botswana, as a country, and Setswana, themain vernacular and national language of Botswana. However, little attempt has been made to investigatethe origin of the stem -tswana, the root of the ethnic name. There have only been a few speculative attemptsby some scholars. This study re-examined and re-interpreted data from the earlier studies, using a historicaland comparative linguistics approach. This method traces the likely historical or evolutionary path thatthis stem might have taken. The main argument of this study was that names are usually not given by thespeakers themselves, but by their neighbours. Another important argument was that there was a sharedculture and identity among many of the people in the interior of the Southern African region, despitethe various names that have been given to those cultures and peoples over time. This study widened thescope of the investigation to explore the possible origin and development of the stem -tswana. One of itspremises was that names are not always in congruence with reality
Johnny Gumb’s Diary of His Return Visit to Mochudi in 2003
Get PDFIn early 1965, Johnny Gumb, then aged 18, came on an interview with Naomi Mitchison in a nationalnewspaper in which she explained that she had been given an ancient printing press which she was havingshipped to Mochudi in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. She had earlier visited Mochudi for the installationof Kgosi Linchwe II of Bakgala-ba-Kgafela. When Johnny met Naomi, she told him more about the pressand about Mochudi. She then put him in touch with Martin Ennals, General Secretary of the NationalCouncil of Civil Liberties, who had been instrumental in setting up a Community Centre there which wasrun by Sandy Grant. Ennals was able to pull strings so that Voluntary Service Overseas took Johnny on asone of their volunteers