On students’ challenges and motivations learning Spanish with
the current curriculum in South African universities
Sobre los desafíos y motivaciones de los estudiantes para
aprender español con el currículo actual en universidades
sudafricanas
María Recuenco Peñalver
Universidad de Málaga, España y Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo, Sudáfrica
mariarecuenco@uma.es; maria.recuencopenalver@uct.ac.za
Arturo Mendoza Ramos
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y Universidad de Witwatersrand, Sudáfrica
a.mendoza@enallt.unan.mx y amendoza@sudafrica.unam.mx
ABSTRACT
Spanish is one of the most widely spoken and learnt languages worldwide. Spanish teaching
in Africa has been predominantly in Francophone countries and the Magreb. In the Southern
region of Africa, Madagascar and South Africa are the two countries with the highest number
of learners. In South Africa, although students in higher education are motivated to learn
Spanish, the implementation of language policies and the current Spanish language curriculum
in South African universities have affected the number of enrolments in recent years. In this
paper, we examine the current situation of Spanish studies in higher education institutions in
South Africa, focusing on the cases of the University of Cape Town and the University of the
Witwatersrand. A survey was conducted among 89 first, second and third-year students who
were learning Spanish at those universities in 2019 and 2020. The results suggest that Spanish
is an important language to learn in South African universities, but its implementation at the
tertiary level might benefit from some revision of the current Spanish language curriculum.
Finally, we would argue that the design and implementation of language policies in higher
education are having a negative impact on the opportunities for students to learn Spanish.
Keywords: Spanish language, higher education, South Africa, motivation, curriculum revision
RESUMEN
El español es una de las lenguas más habladas y aprendidas en todo el mundo. La enseñanza
del español en África ha sido relevante en países francófonos y en el Magreb. En la región del
sur de África, Madagascar y Sudáfrica son los dos países con el mayor número de estudiantes.
En Sudáfrica, concretamente, aunque existe motivación a este respecto entre los estudiantes
universitarios, los números de matrículas se han visto reducidos en los últimos años debido a
la puesta en marcha de ciertas políticas lingüísticas y el actual currículo de enseñanza del
español como lengua extranjera. En este artículo, examinaremos la situación actual de los
Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas (RNAEL) ISSN 1699-6569
Vol. 16 Núm. 33 (2022) doi: 10.26378/rnlael1633496
Recibido: 12/08/2022 / Aprobado: 5/11/2022
Publicado bajo licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento Sin Obra Derivada 4.0 Internacional
estudios de español en las instituciones de educación superior sudafricanas y nos centraremos
en los casos de la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo y la Universidad de Witwatersrand, en
Johannesburgo. Para ello, se llevó a cabo una encuesta entre 89 estudiantes de español en
primer, segundo y tercer año en los años 2019 y 2020. Los datos recogidos sugieren que el
español es una lengua importante para los estudiantes universitarios en Sudáfrica, pero su
currículo podría necesitar cierta revisión y mejora. Para terminar, se hablará también del
diseño y la ejecución de las políticas lingüísticas sudafricanas y su impacto en las
oportunidades de los estudiantes en relación con el estudio del español como lengua
extranjera.
Palabras clave: lengua española, educación superior, Sudáfrica, motivación, revisión curricular
1. INTRODUCTION
In this paper we shall give an account of the current situation of Spanish as a foreign
language in South Africa, focusing on its study at tertiary level, with the intention of
determining whether a curriculum revision might be necessary and/or beneficial.
Despite the importance of Spanish as a language for Africans, as we shall see,
there are not many papers on this particular topic. Javier Serrano’s lengthy report
from 2014 titled La enseñanza del español en África Subsahariana: documentación y
propuestas revealed both the interest in the language and its importance. Not many
have pursued the subject since then. Therefore, we are hoping to contribute to
reflexion on the matter within the specific context of South African studies.
We will start by presenting an overview of the state of Spanish studies in the
African continent, moving on to the particular situation of South Africa and its
background. We shall present the survey we conducted in order to learn about
students’ reasons for registering and deregistering for Spanish and we shall finish our
paper by discussing the possibility of a curriculum revision, based on the survey’s
results and our own experiences.
1.1 Spanish in Africa
The learning of Spanish in Africa is concentrated in Northern, Western, and Central
Africa, particularly in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal,
Angola, Cameroon, and Gabon. Kaben (2017), for example, provides a clear example
on how Spanish has become an important language to learn, particularly in Algeria
and Egypt. The dissemination of Spanish through language and teacher training
courses in northern Africa has been promoted by Instituto Cervantes, and its growth
has been extended from primary and secondary education to the university level.
Another important reason for the increase of Spanish in that region is the
establishment of Spanish companies in these two countries.
According to the very first large-scale study of Spanish teaching and learning
in Sub-Saharan Africa coordinated by Serrano (2014), the number of Spanish learners
in the region back then reached 1.5 million students. Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa
—after the United States, the European Union and Brazil— represents the region with
the fourth largest number of Spanish learners. The countries with the highest
numbers of enrolled students are Ivory Coast (566,178), Benin (412,515), Senegal
(356,000), Cameroon (193,018) and Gabon (167,410), figures that represent almost
90 percent of all Spanish learners in Sub-Saharan Africa (Instituto Cervantes 2021:
57). In Southern Africa, the situation shows a somewhat gloomy scenario. Of the
12 countries that constitute this geographical region, Madagascar is the country with
the largest number of Spanish learners with 7,676 students (Gil Villa & Raharivola
2014), thanks to the presence of Spanish in basic, secondary, and tertiary education.
The country with the second largest number of learners in this region is South Africa,
with about 1,800 recorded students (Gómez & Pérez 2014), while other countries in
the region either do not report data or register figures below 300 learners of Spanish.
We believe that all in all, the teaching situation of Spanish on the African continent is
circumscribed by the language policies of each country.
Regarding the presence of Hispanic academic and cultural bodies in Africa, of
the 20 Cervantes Institute’s branches on the continent, 19 are in the Maghreb. The
only one in Sub-Saharan Africa is in Dakar, Senegal. Inaugurated in 2010 as Aula
Cervantes, it was recently converted in 2021 into the very first Instituto Cervantes in
Sub-Saharan Africa (Instituto Cervantes 2021). Moreover, only a few years ago, in
2018, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) inaugurated its first
Centre for Mexican Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa, to promote student
mobility, academic exchange, and the teaching and certification of Spanish as a
foreign language at the University of Witwatersrand (Mendoza & Ruiz 2019).
The certification of Spanish in Africa has a strong presence in the north of the
continent, particularly the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE),
administered in the different branches of the Instituto Cervantes. In Sub-Saharan
Africa, Spanish language certification is carried out through Embassies, as well as
both private and public institutions. However, given the lack of oral examiners, the
administration of these exams is limited. In South Africa, for example, the DELE exam
takes place exclusively at the University of Cape Town. The Servicio Internacional de
Evaluación de la Lengua Expañola (SIELE)—designed and implemented thanks to the
collaboration between Spain, Mexico and Argentina—whose aim is to incorporate
different varieties of Spanish, is also administered mainly in North Africa, but rarely
in Sub-Saharan Africa (Instituto Cervantes 2021). In the case of South Africa, the
first certifying centre was created in 2018 by the UNAM Centre for Mexican Studies in
Johannesburg, and there is only one other certifying centre, in Durban (SIELE 2021).
The advantage of this exam is that it takes place online through the certifying centres.
Since the pandemic, students can take the exams remotely from home under the
supervision of the certifying centre where the student enrols. The reading and
listening comprehension tests are assessed automatically by the computer and the
oral and written tasks are recorded and subsequently assessed in Spain, Mexico and
Argentina.
1.2 Teaching Spanish in Higher Education in Africa
In English-speaking countries in Africa, like South Africa, and specifically at university
level, the way of understanding the curriculum structure and subjects’ organisation
follows a very similar pattern to that of the old British Higher Education system, in
which students can obtain a three-year bachelor’s degree, followed by Honours,
Masters and PhD studies, for which the degree is currently divided into major and
minor subjects. That means that any student interested in languages can take, in
their first year at university, four completely unrelated subjects, one of them being
any language of their choice, provided they have no prior knowledge of it. Students
can therefore register for Spanish (or any other European Modern Language) in
combination with degree courses related to Law, Psychology, Mathematics, Film and
Media and/or Social Development, among many others. A student interested in
languages can also register exclusively in language-related topics: Spanish, French,
Italian and/or Linguistics and/or English (which is not very often the case). Even
though students are asked to plan properly from their first year at university, this
curricular fragmentation and independence in terms of choice of subjects and freedom
to customize the programme involves a significant timetable clashing component that
ends up restraining some students from completing the majors of their choice.
In terms of the internal organisation of contents inside the Spanish curriculum
(the way the curriculum is devised in the universities that offer Spanish in Anglophone
countries in Africa as part of a major programme), there is a clear differentiation
between language, culture and literature. In all three of them, there is also a gradual
progression from the initial and exclusive study of the language and culture in first
year, to an introduction to Hispanic literature in second year, which becomes the focus
of teaching in the third year.
The lack of Spanish teaching material developed for an African audience has
resulted in the use of textbooks published either in the United States or in Europe
(particularly, Spain or the United Kingdom) by non-Africans, or with minimal African
participation. None of the books used either at the University of Cape Town or the
University of Witwatersrand have been created with the African student in mind, or
for their specific characteristics or needs. The fact that there is very little material
produced on the continent implies restrictions in terms of both affordability and
availability for the specific South African context, as well as the suitability of learning
approaches, methods and dynamics originated in the classroom. However, there are
exemplary cases, particularly in African Francophone countries: for example,
Composite Course in Spanish Grammar. Translation and Stylistics (Lamptey 2005),
Español en África (Bena & Pujol 1987) and Buenos días (Manso, Rodríguez & Elá 1987)
from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. As for teaching materials at tertiary level, we
can mention Spanish for Africa (Adra & Suárez 2010), done in Ghana in collaboration
with AECID (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development) and
Didáctica del Español, coordinated in Cameroon by Medina and Habissou (2000) and
reviewed by the University of Extremadura (Spain). The Ivory Coast collection
Horizontes (1998–2022) is one of the best known in the whole continent. Specifically
created for the teaching and learning of Spanish in Ivory Coast, it has been recently
followed by Ya estamos (2018) coordinated by Niango.
As for the human resources involved in the teaching of Spanish in Africa, there
is still an extremely high percentage of lecturers that mainly come from Spain or from
Latin America. In the case of South Africa, for example, the Heads of the three
Spanish departments at the University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria and
the University of the Witwatersrand are from Spanish-speaking countries.
1.3 Background of teaching and learning Spanish as a foreign language in
South African universities
In South Africa, as is the case with many African universities, learning foreign
languages, along with multilingualism and multiculturalism factors, is intrinsically
linked to the history of colonialism and is at the core of the conversations around the
need for change across universities. Dutch and English colonies in the 17th and 18th
centuries in South Africa were clear examples of the imposition of English and Dutch
(evolving into Afrikaans) as means of education and coveted instruments of social
manipulation (Probyn 2005; Hartshorne 1995). English, however, was the lingua
franca for political resistance and liberation by the educated African elite in South
Africa and in other African Anglophone countries (Heugh 1995; Pennycook 1995).
In more recent years, the South African government elected in 1994 created a
new Language-in-Education Policy (1997). This new LiEP aimed at the construction of
a non-racial nation through the promotion of multilingualism and the use of the eleven
official South African languages. Programmes were developed to redress the status
of African languages, and to ensure equitable access to the education system, as well
as quality learning and success for all learners within the system. This language policy
targeted all levels of education, from primary school to university. However, the lack
of means and properly prepared educators, as well as the positive perception of
English for social, economic, and educational development, has made such
implementation ineffective in South Africa and other African countries (Howie 2003;
Rubagumya 1994). Unfortunately, the mismatch between the languages used at
home and at school has a deleterious effect on students’ performance, particularly
aggravated at the university level (CEPD 2012; Hurst, Madiba & Morreira 2017).
Regarding the specific promotion and learning of foreign languages, in 2003
the South African Department of Education approved Spanish as one of the eleven
foreign languages to be formally studied in the country. This was followed in 2006 by
government approval of a new academic curriculum for secondary education that
made the study of two national languages compulsory and allowed two foreign
languages as electives, Spanish being one of them since 2003. This meant that
students doing Spanish up until the last year of their secondary education have the
possibility of taking Spanish as one of their exams for matriculation (a requirement
for university acceptance). It is worth mentioning that when the World Cup was
hosted in South Africa in 2010, Spanish became very popular due to the initial match
between South Africa and Mexico, followed by the overall victory of the Spanish
national team.
Therefore, the landscape of Spanish as a foreign language has changed, not
always positively, in the past two decades. UNISA, the first university to offer Spanish
in 1966, closed its Spanish department in 2015, while the University of KwaZulu Natal,
which started in 1993, closed in 1997. Nowadays, out of 23 universities in South
Africa, only four teach Spanish as a foreign language: Stellenbosch University, the
University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria and the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The last three mentioned are the only ones, however,
that offer Spanish as part of the university curriculum. The study of Spanish at the
University of Stellenbosch is not part of a university programme. It rather comprises
courses that run in collaboration with the Postgraduate and International Office
(PGIO) and are offered to Stellenbosch University students and the general public.
Another important contribution to the teaching of Spanish in South Africa
comes from the Language Training Unit of the South African Department of
International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), which oversees the linguistic
training of its officials within the Diplomatic Training, Research and Development
Branch. This governmental body teaches languages such as English, French, Spanish,
Mandarin, Arabic, as well as Portuguese (DIRCO 2015). DIRCO started teaching
Spanish in 1987, and since 2007, there have been two full-time permanent Spanish
instructors. In 2020, the number of enrolments at DIRCO rose to nearly 50 students,
a considerable increase if we compare it with the 12 to 13 students reported in 2014.
In the already mentioned 2014 study done by Serrano (2014), that provided a
detailed portrayal of the situation of Spanish teaching and learning in Sub-Saharan
Africa, Gómez and Pérez (2014), the specific chapter dedicated to South Africa
revealed that students from the University of Cape Town, the University of the
Witwatersrand, and the University of Pretoria mainly learnt Spanish for future
professional opportunities, personal interest, travelling, appealing sound, knowledge
of similar languages, and curiosity. Students also reported having some awareness of
Spanish language and culture (e.g., food, cinema, music, soccer, bullfighting, and
way of life, among other aspects). These authors highlighted that by 2012, South
Africa experienced an increasing demand to learn Spanish in secondary schools, and
with private tutors. Following Gómez and Pérez (2014), we would argue that Spanish
holds an enduring attraction for South Africans, with a fluctuating demand that
responds to language policies, time, money, teaching staff availability, and other
variables (e.g., past learning experiences, musical hits, sport-related victories, and
the like).
Taking the above into account, and comparing the situation presented by
Serrano’s publication, the main conclusion we can draw from Gómez and Pérez
observations (2014) is that there has been a slow, but consolidated interest in the
teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in the past decade. This has been partly
due to public funds coming from Spanish-speaking countries, such as the Spanish
Embassy in Pretoria, through its Spanish language teaching assistants (‘lectorados’)
and UNAM, through its Mexican Studies Centre in Johannesburg. The learning
scenario, however, has changed in recent years with the implementation of language
policies in tertiary education. Bachelor programmes such as Engineering and Arts, at
the University of the Witwatersrand, implemented a language policy in 2019 that
compels students to learn Zulu, Sesotho, or South African Sign Language before they
choose one of the six modern European languages offered by the School of Literature,
Language and Media.
Chart 1 below shows the number of students enrolled in the past eight years
in the three South African universities that include Spanish as part of their university
curriculum. In this chart, we can observe two things. Firstly, a decline of the number
of students enrolled in Spanish courses at the University of Cape Town and even more
drastically at the University of the Witwatersrand—except for the enrolment in 2021
at Wits (84 first-year students registered), due to a technical error on the platform
that allowed students to enrol in Spanish courses instead of the new compulsory
languages. Secondly, it allows us to appreciate the enormous difference between the
number of students that take first year Spanish and the ones that effectively finish
the three-year degree programme.
Chart 1. Spanish enrolment in South African Universities
Regarding the low numbers in Spanish registration at the University of
Witwatersrand, this issue is directly related to a language policy recently implemented
in 2019 but conceived in 2003. Its aim is to promote multilingualism, highlighted by
the inclusion of Sesotho as co-medium of instruction alongside English (Conduah
2003). However, few changes were made since 2003, and in 2014, a large-scale
survey showed that most of the students, scholars and administrative staff would
prefer to use English as a medium of communication (University of the Witwatersrand
2014). It also showed that isiZulu and Sesotho were chosen first and second by most
students as the preferred African languages to be developed and learnt within the
university. Thus, in 2015, Wits adopted a new Language Policy ‘aimed at promoting
creativity, selfhood and cognition through linguistic diversity’ (University of the
Witwatersrand 2021). In 2016, the university created a Language Planning and
Development Board at Wits with a new strategy to implement the language policy in
four phases. Phases one and two included interpreting services, the translation of key
documents, multilingual signage and branding, and the development of teaching
materials in isiZulu, Sesotho and South African Sign Language, which was included in
the list of languages to be taught. Phase three was implemented in 2018 for staff and
in 2019 for students, by teaching the aforementioned languages as part of their
professional and educational development. Phase four is set to be carried out by
academics by including isiZulu, Sesotho and South African Sign Language alongside
English as medium of instruction in relevant fields. In 2018, this language policy
became mandatory for Bachelor of Arts and Engineering students (Mashishi 2018).
Students are compelled to take one full year of one of these three language courses
as part of their elective subjects. If, for example, they are fluent in isiZulu or seSotho,
they must either learn sign language or they can choose a foreign language, such as
Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian or German. This language policy’s
implementation clearly deters students from learning one of the Modern European
Languages on offer and has a clear and direct relationship with the significant
decrease in enrolment numbers for Spanish. To support this, Chart 2 below shows
the massive increase of students learning compulsory languages from 2019 (i.e.,
Sesotho, isiZulu and South African Sign Language) at the University of the
Witwatersrand.
Chart 2. Sesotho, isiZulu and South African sign language enrolments at the University of the
Witwatersrand
The sharp difference between the number of students that take first year
Spanish and the ones that effectively finish the three-year degree programme might
lead us to question the internal organisation of the contents of the Spanish curriculum.
According to the way the curriculum is devised in the three universities that offer
Spanish in South Africa within the bachelor’s degree, language, culture and literature
form part of the same programme. This means that students who are only interested
in learning the language are compelled to take the culture and literature modules as
well.
Although South Africa boasts five of the ten most important universities in the
African continent (Times Higher Education 2021), and it represents the third largest
economy in Africa, the number of Spanish students enrolled in higher education is
sparse in comparison with other African countries. The scarcity of research conducted
in Southern Africa impedes the understanding of the teaching and learning situation
of Spanish in this important enclave of the globe. Aside from Serrano’s large-scale
study from 2014, there are very little means to assess the current situation in Sub-
Saharan Africa, other than the efforts deployed by the Instituto Cervantes or, more
locally, the Asociación de Hispanistas del Sur de África (AHSA), with its activities,
including a biennial Colloquium devoted to the analysis of the situation of Spanish as
a foreign language in the Southern region of Africa. In 2019, the AHSA Colloquium
took place at the University of the Witwatersrand, coorganised in collaboration with
the Mexican Studies Centre (National Autonomous University of Mexico in South
Africa) and the University of Cape Town. In 2022, after a two-year gap due to the
COVID pandemic, the Colloquium took place again at the University of Pretoria. There
are a few other associations in the Continent that we are aware of, such as the African
Association of Hispanists, the Beninese Association of Hispanists, the Cameroonian
Association of Hispanists, the Ghanaian Association of Hispanists (Instituto Cervantes,
2022) and the Asociación de Hispanistas de Egipto (HEG), who organised the I
International Congress of the Association of Arab Hispanists in 2014 (Kaben 2017).
However, the efforts to conduct research and to organise academic events (i.e.,
workshops, colloquia, conferences and symposia) are seldom and rarely articulated
between different regions of the continent. Thus, the aim of this study is to shed light
on the teaching and learning of Spanish in higher education in South Africa,
particularly in a climate where the implementation of language policies in favour of
the teaching of African languages is reshaping the landscape. Students’ needs and
motivations to learn Spanish should be at the core of the curriculum design in higher
education, particularly taking into account that it is about an essential language for a
globalised professional perspective.
2. METHODOLOGY
This 2-phased study was conducted in 2019 and 2020 at the University of Cape Town
and the University of the Witwatersrand, the two highest ranked universities in South
Africa and Africa (Times Higher Education 2021) and with the most consolidated
university programmes in Spanish and Latin American studies. The rationale behind
this study was to identify the reasons why students enrol in Spanish at two of the
South African universities that offer Spanish as part of the undergraduate curriculum.
We also wanted to understand why the number of students enrolled declines steeply
from first to second and third year. Furthermore, we wanted to know how they learn
Spanish and what value they see in learning this language in Higher Education, as
well as the resources and strategies students use to practise Spanish and to improve
their language skills.
2.1 Participants
First, second- and third-year students from both universities participated voluntarily
in both phases. The total number of students who answered the survey in 2019 and
2020 was 85. Some students did not answer some of the questions, but the full range
of answers provided by the 85 students was analysed by the authors of this paper.
Most of the students were young adults, with an average age of 21 years. Nearly half
of the students were enrolled in first year and the rest of them in second and third
year. Most of these first-year students had never had previous contact with Spanish.
As we can observe in Chart 3, the vast majority of students answered that they had
learnt Afrikaans as an additional language. This is the result of the apartheid regime,
which forced students to learn this language. English is the other colonial language
and the lingua franca in the country, so those who do not speak it as L1, must learn
English during their primary and secondary education. In tertiary education, nearly
all the undergraduate and graduate programmes are taught in English. Around 60
percent of the students learnt this additional language at school, but some of them
also learn it at home in private schools or through self-teaching methods.
Chart 3. Other languages students learnt before taking Spanish
2.2 Instrument
The questionnaire which was used for the purposes of this article was created by the
authors of this paper. In both the institutions involved, an application for ethics
clearance was granted, since the research met both the University of Cape Town and
the University of the Witwatersrand’s criteria for ethical research and the students’
confidentiality was assured throughout the study. The research was based on willing
participation and students were informed of the fact that they could withdraw from
the study at any given time. First, second- and third-year students from both
universities participated voluntarily in both phases.
The first phase of this study was carried out via a paper survey, which was
distributed in the Spanish classroom during the second term of 2019. Most of the
students took the survey at the same time in one class. A few students missing that
particular day took it a few days later within the same week.
For the second phase, the instrument was modified in order to be converted
into an online survey (see Annexure 1), based on the initial paper questionnaire.
Students could take the survey at their own convenience within a week. Students who
did not answer the survey were reminded after one week1.
2.3 Data analysis
As mentioned, the two surveys took place during the second term of 2019 and the
first term of 2020. Since the first survey was carried out on paper, in the Spanish
classroom, during one of their Spanish lectures, answers were collected by the
lecturer and then registered manually in Excel documents by the authors of this
paper. Lexical frequency was used as the criterion to codify the information provided
by students’ answers. The second survey was carried out electronically via a Google
survey. During one of their Spanish lectures, students were given a link to access the
survey. They took the questionnaire either at home or at the university using one of
the available computer laboratories. They had a week to access and finish the survey.
The results of this second survey were electronically analysed and processed, and
lexical frequency was used again as the criterion to organise the results.
3. RESULTS
In this section, we report on the results of the two surveys that were administered to
students at the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand (85, in total) in
2019 and 2020. We have divided this section into the following two parts: details
regarding motivation to learn Spanish and its usefulness in students’ lives, and
reasons for studying Spanish and for ending their study.
3.1 Motivation to learn Spanish and its usefulness in students’ lives
In order to have a general overview of students’ interest in learning other languages,
we asked them which other languages they would be interested in learning. Chart 4
shows the popularity of languages students would like to learn. As we can see,
Romance languages are the most popular, followed by some Asian languages and
Russian. When students were asked about their reasons for learning Spanish, the
most common answer was related to the fact that they like the language, the culture,
the history, and/or because it is a heritage language for some of them with a Spanish
or Latin American background.
Chart 4. Other languages students would like to learn
Subsequently, it was our intention to gather more specific information about
the usefulness of Spanish in their lives for personal, academic, and professional
purposes. Chart 5 summarises students’ perceptions of the usefulness of Spanish in
their personal, academic and professional lives.
Chart 5. Usefulness of Spanish in students’ personal, professional and academic lives
Firstly, we asked students about the importance of learning Spanish in their
personal lives. As stated, most of the students learn Spanish because they like the
language and it is widely spoken worldwide. Some students also reported that the
language was interesting and fascinating for them (11). Some like learning other
languages (8) and they chose Spanish because they want to learn a new one (4).
They would also like to read literature in Spanish and learn more about the history,
culture (e.g., art and literature), and popular culture, e.g., watching telenovelas and
movies, or even playing football abroad (5). Some students provided specific answers
related to the heritage of Spanish speakers in their families (3), as well as the
usefulness of Spanish to travel and to make new friends (9), which would ‘allow them
to communicate in real life with people from different Spanish speaking countries’.
However, students who answered that Spanish would not be useful for them,
explained that they do not know anyone who speaks the language and that they do
not have the desire to travel abroad. Finally, for some students the reason for learning
Spanish was the similarity to other languages that they already speak (e.g., French
or Portuguese), which makes it easier to acquire.
We also asked participants about how useful they think Spanish would be for
their academic life. The main reason given by students who answered ‘a bit’ and ‘a
lot’ was their intention to study and work overseas, since they see the language as
the gateway to pursuing graduate studies in a Spanish-speaking country. On the other
hand, a large number of students who answered ‘not much’ and ‘not at all’ explained
that as English is the language of instruction in their current studies, they do not see
much probability of using Spanish in their academic contexts. A few students
reported, however, that they perceive the language as an easy way to ‘boost’ their
university marks, showing a lack of intrinsic interest on the subject. This could
contribute to the significant drop in numbers between first and second year.
Students who consider Spanish to be important for their professional contexts
considered further working possibilities with people from diverse backgrounds as the
main reason for their answer. Some students believed that many jobs require
Spanish-speaking candidates, such as translators, teaching Spanish or English in a
Spanish speaking country, and employment in international relations or medical
fields. Some of them would like to find work overseas and use Spanish to work or to
live in a Spanish speaking country. For example, one student responded that Spanish
would help her/him to volunteer as a doctor in a Spanish-speaking country. Another
student wrote that s/he would like to play in a Spanish football league. Several
students also acknowledged that being able to speak Spanish would ‘increase their
chances of being employed.’ Conversely, students who replied ‘a bit’ did so since they
were uncertain about their professional future. Students who did not see Spanish as
a useful language in their professional life referred to the lack of Spanish usage in
their chosen careers as the reason for their answers.
Additionally, when students were asked if they would like to travel or work in
a Spanish speaking country, the great majority (78) answered affirmatively; hardly
anyone answered negatively (2), a few replied, ‘not much’ (4), and just one person
said ‘maybe’. Most of the participants cited Spain as the most wanted-to-visit country.
Different Latin American countries, namely Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Peru, and Chile,
were also mentioned. Students who have been in Spanish-speaking countries agree
that Spanish is useful for travel, work and study abroad. The ones who answered
positively, considered the benefits of learning and practicing the language in
immersion conditions as the main reason, while the students who replied ‘not much’
or ‘no’ did so because of their lack of fluency in Spanish.
Next, students were asked if they would, eventually, like to settle down in a
Spanish-speaking country. The answers to this question were varied, but the majority
showed their willingness to do so (23). Some others replied negatively (18), while
five students were hesitant in their answers and replied ‘maybe’. As in previous
questions, Spain was once more the most popular destination. Some other countries
where students would like to live, if not permanently at least temporarily, were
Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. Interestingly, however, the distinction was made
regarding Spanish being more useful for travelling than for living abroad, since most
of them would prefer to live in South Africa. For these students, Spanish would not
be a ‘second’ language for South Africans but an additional language.
3.2 Reasons for choosing and terminating Spanish learning
In terms of reasons to study Spanish, students highlighted the possibilities that the
language entails in terms of travelling and possibly working or studying overseas.
They also consider that Spanish offers a great opportunity to learn from people and
to communicate with family, relatives, and friends from Spanish-speaking countries,
as well as to understand TV series and movies without subtitles. In general, students
said that they would be keen to continue learning Spanish the following year. The
most common reason was that students wanted to continue improving their Spanish
until they became fluent in the language. They were aware, however, that the only
way to do so is to work hard, to practise and to invest time. Students also expected
to gain a better understanding of the culture (e.g., literature and history). The few
students who responded that they did not want to continue learning Spanish said that
the Spanish schedule of the following year would clash with their majors.
Among the participants, there was a general belief that the main reason for
those who dropped Spanish after the first year was associated with the realisation
that it is ‘time consuming and challenging’ and ‘it gets too hard quickly.’ As one
student responded: ‘Speakers of other languages (particularly non-Romance
languages) often have difficulties with concepts such as conjugation, various moods,
and tenses, as well as linguistic nuances (such as the use of ‘vos’ as opposed to ‘tú’
in certain parts of Latin America, or ‘vosotros’ instead of ‘ustedes’ in Spain). All these
make the language more difficult to learn for some and may have something to do
with the large number of dropouts.’ Other students believed that there is a lack of
incentive because they ‘do not see a value in the real world, or at least in the field of
careers that they are pursuing.’ Finally, some students pointed out that Spanish is
perceived as an easy way to obtain credits, and when they realise that it is more
difficult than what they thought, they drop it the year after. ‘I think a lot of students
take it as a “filler”. What I mean is they have the three main courses that they want
to take, and they need a fourth to obtain the credits to pass. Therefore, they take a
“filler”, which could be Spanish.’ Another student reported that ‘many find it more
difficult than they originally thought, as their impressions are often initially
conditioned by portrayals of Spanish in popular culture.’
Despite this, when students were asked about how easy they thought it would
be to learn Spanish, a significant number replied that it would not be easy. The main
reasons were, on the one hand, the structure of the language (for example, the verbal
conjugation, tenses, and use of moods in Spanish, such as indicative versus
subjunctive, and the regional variants and dialects of Spanish) and on the other hand,
the novelty and the challenge of learning a new language.
4. DISCUSSION
In this study, we have provided a panorama of the current situation of teaching
Spanish in Higher Education in South Africa. We also explored the reasons why South
African students choose to register for Spanish, along with the reasons behind
deregistration, particularly after the first year. In the first place, we would argue that
the teaching of Spanish in South African universities would benefit from a revision in
the current context of curriculum transformation. There is, in our opinion, a clear lack
of suitability in terms of the learning approaches, methods and dynamics and its
relevance for the African pedagogic, historical, socioeconomic, and cultural context.
This clearly makes the study of Spanish both difficult and yet not relevant enough
and/or useful for South African students. These considerations highlight the urgent
need for both creativity and self-reflection to acknowledge the misalignment between
what is on offer from the University side and the students’ needs in South Africa.
Following Mandani (2019), we believe that ‘the challenge in higher education, in Africa
and elsewhere, is to be both responsive to the local and engaged with the global (16).’
The decolonisation of curricula should not merely imply a change of content (i.e.,
inclusion of the study of African authors in Spanish), but it should also incorporate
the means to teach and assess. As Morreira and Luckett (2018) state, we believe that
the curriculum does not only cover content but also ‘implicit ways of knowing, ways
of doing and ways of being.’
Language policy planners, stakeholders and academic professionals in South
Africa should revise the Spanish curriculum based on three factors: what to teach,
how to teach and to what purpose. As we saw in the survey conducted with students,
the two main reasons for dropping Spanish after the first year are, firstly, that the
language is not as easy as they would expect, and more importantly, that they are
interested in learning Spanish not to get a degree, but to be able to speak the
language for personal and professional purposes. Students who continue learning
Spanish in second and third year are pursuing a major in Spanish and Latin American
studies, which is not the main goal for the majority. The current curriculum in higher
education envisions Spanish as an indissoluble association of language, literature, and
culture, which deters students from just learning the language. We would argue that
the focus in the curriculum should be on the study of the language, at all levels, rather
than literature and culture. Spanish as a discipline should be taught as a meaningful
language of empowerment, that will allow students to work and communicate in this
language in a globalised world.
While not proposing the abandonment of the study of Hispanic culture and
literature in Spanish, nor questioning the relevance of the study of literature, we
reckon that it should be approached from a different angle, rather as a complement
to the study of the language, and not the main objective of any course in an
undergraduate degree. Literature and culture, as inseparable manifestations, and
consequences of language, should be used as tools by lecturers to teach the language.
Teaching Hispanic culture in the Spanish curriculum should include cultural references
to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, with special emphasis and reference
to Afrohispanic and Afrolatin culture, and the historical connection between Africa and
South America. The cultural exchange, product of the trade of slaves to the Americas
after the colonisation of the continent, should be included in the teaching material—
another reason why the current teaching material produced, mainly in Spain, for
Europeans, Canadians, and Americans, does not respond to the commonalities
between Africa and South America.
Furthermore, regarding the language itself, special attention should be
dedicated to the study of the different Spanish linguistic varieties of the Spanish-
speaking countries in Africa, including Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara, as well
as its written production in other African countries, such as Algeria, Morocco, and
Cameroon. In the same vein, all the linguistic varieties of South America should be
part of the curriculum, which should necessarily move away from the prevailing
Spanish-from-Spain hegemony: this is what has been happening at the University of
the Witwatersrand since the opening of the Mexican Studies Centre.
Spanish instruction should also follow a multilingual approach. South Africa is
a multicultural country with 11 official languages. English is spoken as a lingua franca,
but less than ten percent of the population speak English as L1 (Ethnologue
Languages of the World 2022). In everyday life, due to shortage of local human
resources, and since most of the Spanish language lecturers come from Spain or Latin
America, the only way to teach Spanish is by using English, particularly in the first
year (e.g., Corcoll-Lpez & Gonzlez-Davies 2016). That leaves aside other important
local languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, spoken by nearly 40 per cent of the
population (Ethnologue Languages of the World 2022). Using English during the first
year of Spanish instruction might have a negative impact on South African students’
performance whose L1 is other than English (e.g., Heugh 2000; Hurst 2016; Kapp &
Arend 2011; Department of Basic Education, 2010). Following Brown (2021), Gánem-
Gutiérrez and Roehr (2011), and Tognini and Oliver (2012), we claim that the
teaching of Spanish in South Africa should not be through English as the only L1, but
rather exclusively in Spanish, and/or, ideally, through a multilingual approach that
includes the different national languages spoken in each province.
The main objective for any discipline, including Spanish in higher education,
should remain its usefulness and value for students. The Spanish curriculum should
be revised bearing in mind the reasons why students learn this language: their
individual interests and motivations. Through this survey we identified that their main
goals are personal and professional. Students desire to travel to Spain or Latin
America, and they see the value of being able to communicate through a language
that is spoken by nearly 567 million Spanish native-speakers around the world
(Instituto Cervantes 2021: 174). Students are also aware of the potential job
opportunities that will eventually open up in the future if they manage to
communicate efficiently in Spanish. We believe that a comprehensive global market
mapping and analysis is crucial to unveil the professional requirements and sectors
where Spanish students could find opportunities in the business arena, to increase
their employability.
Lastly, we are of the view that other degrees should be advanced instead of
the current degree in Spanish and Latin American studies. Translation and
Interpreting Studies, and degree programmes in Spanish applied to the economic
sectors of Tourism, Renewable Energies, Fisheries, Immigration Practising, Health, as
well as General Business, should be considered as potential ways of enhancing career
opportunities and professional prospects of university students both in South Africa
and in Africa. Related to this, the creation of degree programmes such as essential
training for Spanish students interested in using Spanish for teaching purposes, where
the literary component would certainly find a better fitting space, also needs
consideration. This appears particularly important if we consider the significant
demand for Spanish teachers in many African countries where the need for instructors
of Spanish as a foreign language is a reality (Serrano 2014).
5. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have explored students’ motivations to learn Spanish in higher
education. By addressing the number of students enrolled in the past five years, and
across first, second and third year, we can conclude that despite the interest in
learning Spanish, the language policies recently implemented in higher education and
the current curriculum makes it difficult for university students to learn the language.
We believe that a thorough revision of the current curriculum is necessary,
considering the professional opportunities for university graduates nowadays.
Furthermore, without underestimating the importance of language policies in favour
of the learning of African languages, we claim that students should be able to allocate
their elective courses in the language they freely wish to learn. It is our hope that this
paper will contribute to the debate around this topic with the parties involved in order
to improve the current situation to the benefit of students of Spanish in South Africa.
NOTES
1 The survey can be accessed through the following link, which was given to students by their lecturers
of Spanish in the classroom:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lLqxbYVeNhhFHcLfErJug9njDpsZeygPQNy0ghWKbMc/edit
REFERENCES
Adra, L. K. & Suárez Viera, C. (2010). Spanish for Africa. Book 1. Accra: Woeli.
Bena, V.T. & Pujol, N. (1988). Español en África. Toledo: Larousse.
Brown, A. (2021). Monolingual versus multilingual foreign language teaching: French and
Arabic at beginning levels. Language Teaching Research, (0), 1–26.
Conduah, A. N. (2003). Introducing an African language for Teaching and Learning at Wits
University. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 12(3), 245–264.
Corcoll-Lpez, C. & Gonzlez-Davies, M. (2016). Switching codes in the plurilingual classroom.
ELT Journal, 70(1), 67–77.
Department of Basic Education (2010). The Status of the Language of Learning and Teaching
(LoLT) in South African Public Schools: A Quantitative Overview. [online]. Available on:
https://www.education.gov.za/Portals/0/Documents/Reports/Status%20of%20LOLT.pd
f
DIRCO (2015). Language Policy of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
[online]. Available on:
http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/2015/dirco_language_policy150706.pdf
Ethnologue Languages of the World (2022). [online]. Available on:
https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ZA
Gánem-Gutiérrez, G.A. & Roehr-Brackin, K. (2011). Use of L1, metalanguage, and discourse
markers: L2 learners’ regulation during individual task performance. International
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 21, 297–318.
Gil Villa, L. & Raharivola J. (2014). El español en Madagascar. In J. Serrano Avilés (Ed.), La
enseñanza del español en África Subsahariana, (pp. 364–381). Madrid: Instituto
Cervantes.
Gómez Amich, M. & Pérez Abad, A. (2014). Situación del español en un país africano
plurilingüe: el caso de Sudáfrica. In J. Serrano Avilés (Ed.), La enseñanza del español
en África Subsahariana, (pp. 518–546). Madrid: Instituto Cervantes.
Hartshorne, K. (1995). Language Policy in Education in South Africa: a Background to the
Future. In R. Mesthrie (Ed.), Language and Social History: Studies in South African
Sociolinguistics, (pp. 306–318). Cape Town: David Philip.
Heugh, K. (1995). From Unequal Education to the Real Thing. In Heugh, K., A. Siegrühn & P.
Pluddemann (Eds.), Multilingual Education for South Africa, (pp. 42–52. Johannesburg:
Heinemann Publishers.
Heugh, K. (2000). The Case Against Bilingual and Multilingual Education in South Africa,
Occasional Paper, 6. Cape Town: PRAESA. [online]. Available on:
https://www.praesa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Paper6.pdf
Howie, S. J. (2003). Language and other background factors affecting secondary pupils'
performance in Mathematics in South Africa. African Journal of Research in Mathematics
Science and Technology Education, 7, 1–20.
Hurst, E. (2016). Navigating language: strategies, transitions, and the ‘colonial wound’ in
South African education. Language & Education: An International Journal, 30(3), 219–
234.
Hurst, E., Madiba, M. & Morreira, M. (2017). Surfacing and Valuing Students’ Linguistic
Resources in an English-Dominant University. In D.M. Palfreyman & C. van der Walt
(Eds.), Academic Biliteracies: Multilingual Repertoires in Higher Education, (pp. 76–95).
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Instituto Cervantes (2021). El español en el mundo. Anuario del Instituto Cervantes. [online].
Available on:
https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuario/anuario_21/el_espanol_en_el_mundo_anuario
_instituto_cervantes_2021.pdf
Kaben, Abdelkader (2017). La situación actual del profesor universitario de español: caso de
Egipto y Argelia. Candil (17), 28-48.
Kapp, R. & Arend, M. (2011). There’s a Hippo on my Stoep’: Constructions of English Second
Language Teaching and Learners in the New National Senior Certificate. Per Linguam,
27(1), 1–10.
Lamptey, V.A.O. (2005). Composite Course in Spanish Grammar. Translation and Stylistics.
Accra: Unimax, MacMillan.
Mandani, M. (2019). Decolonising Universities. In International African Bibliography Online.,
(pp. 15-28). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter
Manso Luengo, A. J., Rodríguez Jorrin, D. & Elá, P. (1987). ¡Buenos Días!: Curso de Español
para niños. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.
Mashishi, N. (September 22, 2018). Wits promotes African languages. Wits Vuvuzela, [online].
Available on:
https://witsvuvuzela.com/2018/09/22/wits-promotes-african-languages/
Medina Revilla, A. & Habissou, B. (2000). Nueva didáctica del español. Enseñanza secundaria.
Yaundé: Ministerio de Enseñanza Secundaria de Camerún y Agencia Española de
Cooperación Internacional.
Mendoza, A. & Guzmán, D. (2019). La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México en Sudáfrica.
Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, 116(177-192). Gobierno de México, [online].
Available on:
https://revistadigital.sre.gob.mx/images/stories/numeros/n116/mendozarruizgrmpe11
6.pdf
Morreira, S. & Luckett, K. (October 17, 2018). Questions academics can ask to decolonise
their classrooms. The Conversation, [online]. Available on:
http://www.adp.uct.ac.za/news/questions-academics-can-ask-decolonise-their-
classrooms-0
Niango, A.C., Melles, I.A., Yepri, A.J.B, Allou, O. & Silué, S. (2018). ¡Ya estamos! 4e. Abiyán:
Nouvelles Éditions Ivoiriennes/Centre d’édition et de Diffusion Africaines.
Nogbou, K, M., Alloboué, C.N., Djédjé, A.B., Yeo, A. & Kanga Kanga, C. (2022). Horizontes.
Espagnol Terminale. Abiyán: EDICEF/NEI.
Pennycook, A. (1995). English in the world / The world in English. In Tollefson, J.W. (Ed.),
Power and Inequality in Language Education, (pp. 34–58). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Probyn, M. (2005). Language and the Struggle to Learn: The Intersection of Classroom
Realities, Language Policy, and Neocolonial and Globalisation Discourses in South African
Schools. In Angel, L.M.Y. Angel & M.W. Peter (Eds.) Decolonisation, Globalisation.
Language-in-Education Policy and Practice. New Perspectives on Language and
Education, (pp. 153-175). Clevedon: Mutlilingual Matters
Rubagumya, C. M. (1994). Teaching and Researching Language in African Classrooms.
Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
Serrano Avilés, J. (2014). La enseñanza del español en África Subsahariana: documentación
y problemas. En J. Serrano Avilés (Ed.), La enseñanza del español en África
Subsahariana, (pp. 15-92). Nairobi: Embajada de España en Kenia, AECID, Instituto
Cervantes, Casa África.
Servicio Internacional de Evaluación de la Lengua Española (2021). [online]. Available on:
https://siele.org/encuentre-su-centro
Times Higher Education (2021). World University Rankings. [online]. Available on:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2021/world-
ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats
Tognini, R. & Rhonda, O. (2012). L1 use in primary and secondary foreign language
classrooms and its contribution to learning. In E. Alcón Soler & M.P. Safont-Jordá (Eds.),
Discourse and language learning across L2 instructional settings, (pp. 53-78).
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
University of the Witwatersrand (2014). Language Policy Survey 2014. Strategic Planning
Division. [online]. Available on:
https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/about
wits/documents/Language%20Policy%20Survey%20Report%202014.pdf
University of the Witwatersrand (2021). Wits Language Policy. [online]. Available on:
https://www.wits.ac.za/about-wits/governance/language-policy/
