Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil.
The purpose of this study is to establish differences and similarities between German and Zulu and to identify areas of difficulty for different groups of South African learners in order to give the language learners autonomy in determining their own learning strategies in accordance with their mother tongue and to foster a mutual understanding between different cultural groups in South Africa. Historically, German is a subject, which was taught to mainly white learners in segregated South African schools; hence research was limited to the problems of English and Afrikaans speaking learners of German as a foreign language. This study is aimed at addressing the problems that Zulu speaking learners would encounter when learning German. Since English and/or Afrikaans form part of the linguistic knowledge of these Zulu speaking students, cognizance is taken of the effects this knowledge has on the learning of German as Lx, where Lx > L3. Learners from English and Afrikaans L1 backgrounds are incorporated into the study as control groups.
The error analysis that forms part of this study reveals that the language repertoire of the learners does indeed impact on language learning. This study is useful for teachers who have little or no knowledge of Zulu, but who are confronted with learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds.