English in the CAPS Curriculum
English is taught as either Home Language (HL) or First Additional Language (FAL) in South African schools. The teaching approach differs significantly between these two streams. Home Language assumes learners arrive with a foundation in the language, while FAL recognises that many learners are developing English proficiency alongside their home language.
Understanding this distinction is essential for effective English teaching in South Africa.
Key Strategies for Teaching English
Scaffolding
Scaffolding provides structured support that is gradually removed as learners develop competence. This is particularly important in FAL classrooms where learners may have limited English exposure outside school.
- Pre-teach vocabulary before reading or listening activities
- Use visual aids, realia (real objects), and gestures alongside spoken language
- Provide sentence frames and writing templates that learners can build on
- Model the expected outcome before asking learners to produce their own work
- Use the learners’ home language strategically to clarify meaning when needed (translanguaging)
Reading Across the Phases
Foundation Phase: Shared reading, phonics instruction, and group guided reading form the core of the CAPS language programme. Learners develop basic reading skills through systematic instruction in letter-sound relationships.
Intermediate Phase: Reading moves from learning to read towards reading to learn. Comprehension strategies (predicting, questioning, summarising) become central. Learners read a range of text types including stories, information texts, and poetry.
Senior Phase and FET: Learners engage with increasingly complex texts. Critical reading skills develop, including analysing author purpose, identifying bias, and evaluating arguments. Literature study (novels, drama, poetry) forms a significant component of HL.
Writing Development
- Process writing – The CAPS curriculum requires a process approach: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Each stage should be taught explicitly
- Text types – Teach the structure and language features of different text types (narrative, descriptive, argumentative, transactional) as specified in CAPS
- Assessment – Use CAPS rubrics for writing assessment. Provide constructive feedback that focuses on one or two areas for improvement rather than marking every error
Speaking and Listening
Oral skills are assessed in CAPS and deserve dedicated teaching time:
- Create opportunities for meaningful classroom talk through discussion, debate, and presentation
- Use think-pair-share to give all learners, not just the confident ones, a chance to speak
- For FAL learners, provide structured speaking activities with clear language support
Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms
Most South African classrooms are multilingual. Effective English teachers in this context:
- Value learners’ home languages as resources for learning, not barriers
- Allow learners to discuss ideas in their home language before expressing them in English
- Build on the language skills learners already have rather than treating them as starting from zero
- Are explicit about the differences between everyday English and academic English
- Teach vocabulary systematically rather than assuming learners will pick it up incidentally
Resources
- CAPS English Home Language and First Additional Language curriculum documents for each phase
- DBE workbooks and readers (available free from the Department of Basic Education)
- Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign (multilingual reading resources)
- Oxford and Cambridge university press materials designed for South African English classrooms