Afrikaans is widely spoken in South Africa and is one of the major official languages. Unlike many beliefs, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country with about 6 million speakers or 13.3 percent of the population.

Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world, and was (like Hindi, Modern Hebrew, and Indonesian) established as a fully standardised language during the 20th century. Afrikaans can be taken as a university subject in, amongst others, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and USA. Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa and is the mother tongue of the majority of the students studying on the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University.

Knowledge of as many languages as possible is a great asset for teachers in a multi-lingual country such as South Africa, and in an increasingly globalised world, therefore it is expected of education students to be able to teach through the medium of more than one language. There is also a good deal of research done about teaching through the medium of a second or third language, as well as the actual teaching of second and third languages –the former especially in the subject English, and the latter especially in the subject group Afrikaans and Tswana.