This paper reports on the findings of a research project that investigated first-year students’ experiences in using multilingual glossaries. They were enrolled in an electrical engineering course at a higher education institution in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected by means of questionnaires and focus group interviews with isiXhosaspeaking students to gain an insight into how the glossaries facilitated or constrained their epistemological access to concepts in the field of engineering. Drawing on the concepts of epistemological access, multilingualism, and biliteracy to establish a framework, we argue that the use of multilingual resources (e.g., glossaries) does not necessarily guarantee students’ epistemological access to knowledge if their biliteracy skills (reading and writing) are underdeveloped in one of the targeted resource languages. This paper concludes that multilingualism is a necessary transformative approach, but that students’ (bi)literacy development in African languages as targeted languages for transformation should also be prioritised and strengthened to facilitate better learning all round.

中文翻译：

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认识论方面的多语制和（双）素养发展：在南非一所大学探索学生使用多语种词汇的经验

本文报告了一个研究项目的结果，该项目调查了一年级学生在使用多语言词汇表方面的经验。他们在南非西开普的一所高等教育机构参加了电气工程课程。通过问卷调查和与isiXhosaspeaking的学生进行的焦点小组访谈来收集数据，以了解术语表如何促进或限制他们在工程学领域对概念的认识论访问。利用认识论获取，多语言和双语的概念来建立框架，我们认为多语言资源的使用（例如，如果他们的双语能力（阅读和写作）未以目标资源语言之一开发，则不一定保证学生在认识论上获得知识。本文的结论是，使用多种语言是一种必要的变革性方法，但也应优先考虑并加强学生在非洲语言中的（双​​）识字能力发展，以此作为变革的目标语言，以促进全面学习。