David Ker in Africa
I have worked in Mozambique in the areas of Bible translation, linguistic description, materials development and electronic publishing.
I'm currently writing a Masters dissertation in Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. My thesis is "Writing practices in a bilingual Mozambican primary school."
I'm a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators USA serving with SIL Mozambique. The information contained on this blog is my own and doesn't necessarily reflect the position or policies of any of the organizations with which I am affiliated.
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Ubuntu that looks like Windows
One of the frustrations in helping newbies switch to Ubuntu is the fact that Ubuntu looks and acts very different. Because of that, all the hard-won skills of many years of Windows use are now useless and a person has … Continue reading
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Schoolbook vs. Textbook in South Africa
I continue to be intrigued by the schoolbooks created by students in the course of their studies. These start out as A4 notebooks that are then covered by plastic. This is a yearly ritual that is really labor intensive. Once … Continue reading
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Postmodern IsiXhosa Picturebooks
I stumbled on a link to the complete PDF of the book Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Pardoy and Self-Referentiality. It’s a fascinating book although I’m not sure Routledge would be happy to see their book being given away for free by … Continue reading
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Cape Town Street Trolley: arbitrary signs
I’m not sure what you expected to see when you saw the words “Cape Town Street Trolley” in the title of this post. But it was probably something like this: But what I was actually thinking about was something like … Continue reading
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Directions, again. Design as mode.
In my previous post (Directions as a multimodal discourse) I looked at a variety of modes for the discourse “Directions to 56 Barrack Street.” When a person wants to get to a new address, he or she can call on … Continue reading
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Directions as a multimodal discourse
I’m slowly working my way through Kress and van Leeuwen’s Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. While Reading Images was concerned with the printed page and the mixture of text, images and ornamentation, In Multimodal Discourse, the … Continue reading
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Describing a text by a Grade 5 boy in South Africa
INTRODUCTION I did a trial run yesterday of photographing a text and discussing it with the child who made it. This assignment was done in June of last year and the boy still vividly remembered the experience and could recite … Continue reading
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