Abstract
M.Ed.
The report presents an account of how learners and teachers use siSwati as their home
language to improve access to mathematics in bilingual classrooms where the language of
learning and teaching is not the home language of the learners and teachers. The practices
on two grade 6 teachers in two different schools in Mpumalanga Province, where the home
language of both the learners and the teachers is siSwati were studied. The study revealed
that while teachers succeeded in translating their non-mathematical discourses in English
into siSwati they struggled to effectively translate their mathematical discourses in English
into siSwati. Where they managed to translate their mathematical discourse in English into
siSwati, access to mathematics improved.