TEACHING SETSWANA PROVERBS AT THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING IN SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

The paper sought to investigate how first year University student’s-teachers understand and instil appreciation of the beauty of Setswana language. Since the proverbs are carriers of cultural values, practices, rituals, and traditional poetry, they are rich in meaning, they can be used to teach moral values for the sake of teaching character building among the students and teaching Setswana at the same time. Proverbs contain values of wisdom, discipline, fairness, preparedness, destiny, happiness, and efforts. Proverbs are short sayings that contain some wisdom or observation about life and or role-play and to use a few of the proverbs to reinforce the meaning, using proverbs as a pedagogical strategy, the researcher has observed that student teachers find it difficult to learn and teach learners at school. Students-teacher’s think and feel about how they conceptualize proverbs, how they define their knowledge and use of Setswana proverbs. The lecturer observed how the nature of proverbs are linked to the culture embedded in the language. In Setswana language there is a proverb that says, “Ngwana sejo o a tlhakanelwa” (A child is a food around which we all gather) which implies that the upbringing of a child is a communal responsibility and not an individual responsibility. Put in simple terms, a child is a child to all parents or adults, since a child’s success is not a family’s success but the success of the community. In doing so, the paper will explore on how student-teachers could make use of proverbs to keep the class interested in learning Setswana proverbs. As a means of gathering qualitative data, a questionnaire was designed and administered to student-teachers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with student teachers. The findings revealed that despite those students-teachers’ positive attitudes towards proverb instruction, they did not view their knowledge of Setswana proverbs as well as the teaching of proverbs. The paper displays that proverbs constitute an important repository of valid materials that can provide student-teachers with new instructional ideas and strategies in teaching Setswana proverbs and to teach different content, which includes Ubuntu and vocabulary and good behaviour. Proverbs must be taught and used by teachers and learners in their daily communication in class and outside the classroom in order to improve their language proficiency.