Multilingualism Education Project(MEP)was formed in 2005 at UCT- CHED faculty with the following specific objectives:
· To provide guidance on how to foster a multilingual environment within the university
· To ensure the development of appropriate multilingual materials in the curriculum in order to support students for whom English is a second language.
· To ensure the development of communicative, workplace-orientated courses in Afrikaans and IsiXhosa for staff and students.
· To promote the intellectualization of isiXhosa and other relevant indigenous African languages for use in different academic disciplines.
The purpose of these strategies is to promote multilingualism in teaching and learning. These include providing discipline-specific multilingual key concept glossaries, working with multilingual tutors from various departments. MEP worked on three glossaries thus far, that is Mechanical Engineering, Economics and Statistics.
One of the main objectives of the UCT language policy is to develop students’ multilingual and multicultural competencies by providing them with the opportunities to learn additional languages. The learning of additional languages prepares students to participate fully in a multilingual society, where multilingual proficiency and awareness are essential.