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Teachers are faced with enormous emotional and physical demands on a daily basis; and have little or no time to reflect on their practice. This becomes problematic for student-educators when they are supposed to go through their practice. The dual purpose of this study was, firstly to investigate English language student-educators' challenges experienced during their teaching practice sessions; and secondly: to recommend better strategies through which such challenges could be addressed. The study was informed by Vygotsky's (1978) Social Constructivist theory, which emphasises social learning and interactive teaching. Based on an action research interpretivist's paradigm, using a qualitative approach, 14 semi-structured group interviews were conducted with 100 student-educators purposefully sampled for this study. The participants wrote a once-off reflective essay as part of their practice teaching portfolio. A document analysis approach was applied while reading the essays to identify the teaching challenges. Among others: lesson planning, alignment of teacher's and learners' activities and meaningful content presentations were confirmed to be the most problematic. These findings show a critical need to design strategies to encourage reflective practice in the undergraduate teacher programme.

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The article highlights folklore as an effective and genuine tool for indigenous language teaching and learning in the 21st century. There is a need to use pure, error-free and standardised language for it to be acknowledged and respected. In the campaign to sustain and preserve the revived indigenous languages—in this case, Sepedi—employing folk narratives in a text-based approach in teaching and learning Sepedi can develop in learners the desire to use language that is more refined, literary, figurative, symbolic and deep in meaning. Document study was adopted as the research method in this inquiry. Folk narratives in Moepathutse by Makopo were explored as they are rich in vocabulary and culture and promote indigenous knowledge. The study revealed that: a) Sepedi folk narratives are rich in relevant Sepedi vocabulary, b) employing folk narratives in a text-based approach results in teaching and learning the language in context and c) folk narratives preserve culture. The study recommends that language teachers promote and conserve indigenous languages through the use of folklore in a text-based approach. This is because folklore enhances relevant vocabulary. Furthermore, folklore supports languages to be learned in context – it is therefore, in the use of folk narratives that ethos, values, traditions, and cultures are preserved in communities. The study therefore, concludes that folklore is a relevant tool through which indigenous languages can be instilled and preserved by language users.