O n f e r e n c e

The Teaching of Language and Communication at CPUT 
The inclusion of Academic Literacy, Language and communication courses in CPUT’s 
mainstream programmes is critical to the academic and professional development of its 
students. However, the design and teaching of these courses are seemingly failing to 
address the skills deficiencies that South African students bring to the universities. 
Evidence from student writings and other array of communication activities suggest that 
these courses have also been affected by the new vision of modern universities (Shore, 
2010; Pineteh, 2012 & 2014). Arguably, the courses have the potential to emancipate, 
empower and socialise students into discipline-specific discourses but lecturers have 
failed to use this space to stimulate meaningful teaching and learning.
Despite the poor language and communicative skills of CPUT students, the South African 
Department of Higher Education still considers courses like Communication as support 
subjects,
especially in universities of technology and therefore they are not entitled to 
the same financial subsidy as mainstream courses.

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-36- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
Unfortunately subject subsidies are determined by a rigid South African higher education 
funding model: Classification of Educational Subject Matter (CESM). This model places 
universities of technology mainstream courses and academic development courses in 
different funding clusters. This implies that although language and communication skills 
courses would attract the same subsidies like Sociology and Linguistics in comprehensive 
universities, they would however attract far less in a university of technology (Badat, 
2009 & 2010). Consequently, the delivery of the courses has tended to suffer from lack 
of adequate human and material resources as well as contact hours (Ng’ambi & Johnston, 
2006). Secondly, the course contents and teaching methods have also contributed 
significantly to the lackluster performance of students. For example, many Language and 
Communication Lecturers still use very traditional methods in an age of increasing 
technological presence in higher education (Ghasemi, Hashemi & Bardine, 2011; 
Pineteh, 2012; Nkhoma; 2002; ). 
Mindful of these challenges, lecturers need to think imaginatively in order to transform 
the teaching of language and communication skills into an invigorating and memorable 
experience for both the lecturer and the students (Thomas and De Villiers n.d.). At CPUT, 
this does not happen because of the pressure to cover a substantial amount of 
communication concepts and administer an equally substantial amount of assessments 
within one academic year. Because of insufficient contact hours, lecturers tend to pay 
more attention to work-related or vocational skills such as business correspondence, 
teamwork, time management and conflict management (Lansberg, 2005). They tend to 
neglect equally essential cognitive concepts such as language skills, critical thinking, 
problem solving, creativity, and other academic literacies (Pineteh, 2012 & 2014). They 
also tend neglect the “use of technologies not only as part of their subject matter but 
also very importantly, as part of their pedagogy and teacher training approaches” 
(Papadima-Sophocleous, 2012). Interesting, the practical and pedagogical challenges 
encountered by Language and Communication lecturers provide a unique opportunity to 
promote self-directed computer-assisted language learning as an alternative learning 
platform.