South Africa Grade 9 Home Language Course Entries

This document outlines the curriculum for Home Language in South Africa. The curriculum aims to develop learners' proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and viewing across various texts and genres. It emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, and effective communication. The curriculum is structured around four language skills: Listening and Speaking, Reading and Viewing, Writing and Presenting, and Language Structures and Conventions.

Listening and Speaking

Listening and speaking skills are developed through focused instruction and integrated activities. Learners are taught listening strategies such as pre-listening, during-listening, and post-listening activities. They practice different kinds of listening, including listening for specific information, comprehension, critical analysis, appreciation, and interaction. Speaking skills are honed through prepared and unprepared speeches, readings, debates, dialogues, interviews, reports, giving directions, and instructions. Emphasis is placed on clear articulation, appropriate language use, and effective communication strategies.

Reading and Viewing

Reading and viewing skills are developed through intensive and extensive engagement with various texts. Learners practice pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading strategies to enhance comprehension. They learn to identify text features, infer meaning, summarize, and analyze texts critically. The curriculum includes formal study of literary texts, focusing on poetry, drama, novels, short stories, and folklore. Learners also engage in extended independent reading to foster a love of reading and broaden their exposure to different genres and text types. Visual literacy is also addressed through the analysis of multimodal and visual texts, including advertisements, cartoons, films, and other media.

Writing and Presenting

Writing skills are developed through the writing process, which includes planning, drafting, revising, editing, proofreading, and presenting. Learners practice writing various text types, including narrative, descriptive, argumentative, discursive, and reflective essays, as well as transactional texts such as letters, emails, reports, and reviews. They learn to use language structures and conventions effectively to create coherent and cohesive texts. The curriculum also emphasizes developing an individual writing style and voice.

Language Structures and Conventions

Language structures and conventions are taught in context and integrated with other language skills. Learners develop a meta-language for talking about language and learn to evaluate texts critically. They study punctuation, spelling, parts of words, nouns, determiners, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, ideophones, vocabulary development, figurative language, clauses, phrases, sentences, passive voice, reported speech, and other language elements. The curriculum emphasizes using language accurately and effectively for different purposes and audiences.