Afrikaans as a First Additional Language
Many South African children learn Afrikaans as their First Additional Language from the Foundation Phase. Short, picture-supported words they can say, read and write are where that starts.
Four kinds of page
Picture words, colours and numbers are traced and then written alone; the matching page asks children to draw a line from each picture to its word.
CAPS links
- Grade 1Learns Afrikaans by ear first: a spoken vocabulary around the teacher’s themes, colour words such as rooi, blou and groen, and beginning sounds like the k in kat.
- Sight wordsIn Grade 1, reads simple classroom labels such as deur and venster, and recognises a few high-frequency words like is, sy and hy.
- Grade 2Follows short instructions such as drawing a circle and colouring it red, and writes a caption for a picture with help.
- Grade 3Writes lists with headings and sentences from dictation, spelling common words correctly from known sounds.
Afrikaans Eerste Addisionele Taal in CAPS is built on what the policy calls toegevoegde tweetaligheid, additive bilingualism: children learn to read and write in their home language first and then carry those skills across. Afrikaans writing is only expected from the third term of Grade 1, so use the matching page earlier as a listening and pointing task, and the trace-and-write rows from the second half of the year.
Colour and number cards (kleur- en getallekaarte) are on the CAPS list of suggested EAT resources, and the policy gives 300 high-frequency Afrikaans words as a guide, among them blou, rooi, een, drie and vyf. CAPS asks that these words are never taught out of context, so tie each sheet to the week’s theme, story or rhyme.
Summarised in our own words from the DBE’s CAPS for Afrikaans Eerste Addisionele Taal, Grades 1–3, and Afrikaans Huistaal, Grades R–3 (2011).
