The Impact of Gender, Socioeconomic Status and Home Language on Primary School Children’s Reading Comprehension in KwaZulu-Natal (original) (raw)
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Per Linguam
The main aim of the study was to determine the reading comprehension performance of Grade 5 Setswana-speaking children in a rural province in South Africa, where the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) is English. Thirty-four Grade 5 learners from one province and from the same socioeconomic background were selected through purposive sampling. The research design adopted was non-experimental, descriptive and quantitative in nature. Participants were required to perform reading comprehension tasks in English and Setswana. Four stories were utilised from the reading comprehension subtest of the GORT-4™ Test Form A. Two of the stories from the test were administered on completion of the English reading comprehension task. The other two stories were translated and adapted into Setswana. The mean raw scores of results obtained were calculated and comparisons at different levels were performed using t-tests. Results revealed poor overall reading comprehension scores in both languages; with scores below 55%. Furthermore, current results indicated better performance in Setswana reading comprehension, with higher scores obtained in the difficult Setswana story than in English. These findings were statistically significant (p<.05). Implications of the influence of home / first language on reading comprehension, if the LoLT is not the learner's first language, are raised.
2011
are to be thanked for their accessibility and unwavering provision of knowledge and expertise. Tjeerd Plomp and Roel Bosker, our partners on the SANPAD PIRLS project, gave unstintingly of their time to guide and assist the PIRLS team when needed. We are very grateful to them as wise critical friends. Local participants were also involved in the research process: The international quality assurance monitor, Janet Condy, visited schools and conducted quality assurance of the national study in South Africa. Dilicom undertook coordination of the translations and completed one of the most difficult jobs in the study, translating 18 test instruments and two questionnaires into 10 languages, resulting in 210 different versions (176 for prePIRLS and 34 for PIRLS) of the instruments. Consulta worked in the field collecting data and Datanet captured it.
2019
Reading is one of the components of literacy that plays a crucial role in accessing knowledge. It develops the children's mind and stimulates their understanding of the reading content and enables them to function and communicate effectively in society. Research conducted in the field of literacy suggests that there is a literacy crisis (especially in reading), around the world. Recent research indicates that South African Foundation Phase learners perform poorly in reading comprehension. Considering poor literacy results observed in South Africa, it is important to explore reading as a socio-cultural and cognitive practice and to identify the factors that contribute towards adequate acquisition of reading comprehension skills in the Foundation Phase. Thus the focus of this study is on reading comprehension in isiXhosa Home Language which is used as the main language of learning and teaching from Grade R-3. I have used a qualitative approach as an underpinning research methodological framework for this study. Data was collected by means of interviews and classroom observations from two selected Grade three classrooms in one primary school in the Western Cape. The findings of this study illustrate the significance of learners' prior knowledge and the use of adequate resources to enhance learners' reading comprehension. The study concludes that reading comprehension is a cognitive process that demands innovative teaching approaches that will facilitate meaningful learning across the curriculum.
Still Falling at the First Hurdle: Examining Early Grade Reading in South Africa
South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality
This chapter provides an overview of what we know about reading outcomes in South Africa. After an initial survey of some foundational tenets of reading research we show that while reading outcomes in South Africa improved between 2006 and 2011 they have stagnated between 2011 and 2016. The most recent PIRLS study (2016) showed that 78% of Grade 4 children cannot read for meaning in any language. There is nothing inevitable about these results. The knowledge and instructional practices required to teach children to read-as well as the resources needed to do it-are known and well understood internationally, even in highpoverty contexts. We argue that the inequalities evident in the schooling system have their roots in unequal life chances doled out at birth and consolidated through differential reading trajectories. Moving beyond the 'comprehension iceberg' we document what lies beneath these dire results. The majority of children have not mastered the basics of decoding in their home language in Grade 1 or 2 making reading for meaning or pleasure unlikely. We advocate for an approach focusing on early reading success and ensuring that teachers know how to teach reading, that that they have the materials to do so, that children have ready access to books and that reading outcomes are assessed annually. * The title Falling at the first hurdle was that of a research report by Taylor (1989) on literacy in South African schools. That we face similar challenges with similar diagnoses 30 years on is reason enough to reproduce Taylor's incisive title, with a slight modification.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2015
It is widely acknowledged that different communities, such as language groups and socio-economic status (SES) families, practice literacy in different ways. Certain language communities of low SES observe literacy interactions differently from the traditional “schooled literacy”, which may influence learners’ reading literacy. However, the link between language communities, SES and reading literacy has not been extensively researched, especially in the South African context where there are 11 official languages and wide socio-economic disparities. This article examines students’ social literacy in relation to their reading literacy levels, and reveals that the literacy gap between indigenous South African language (ISAL) speakers, a number of whom are from low SES families, and speakers of English and Afrikaans is further widened at the tertiary level due to the mismatch between the social literacy practices of the different language groups and the education system that operates in ...
PIRLS Literacy 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016: South African Children’s Reading Literacy Achievement, 2017
Grade 4 is a pivotal turning point in the South African school system. In Grade 4, learners must transition from learning how to read, to reading for meaning and learning. An added complication is that in African language schools, learners are taught in the African language from Grade 1 to Grade 3, and then in Grade 4 must switch to English as medium of instruction. Therefore, participation in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 provided much needed insight into whether South African learners can read at the appropriate level. The international study included 50 countries and the 2016 round was the third cycle in which South Africa participated. A random, stratified sample of schools and classes were selected to represent all 11 official languages as well as the nine provinces. Learners wrote the reading comprehension test in their language of instruction, to which they had been exposed in Grade 1 to 3. In the 2016 participation, a total of 12 810 Grade 4 learners were assessed with the PIRLS instruments. The main findings included that the majority of the South African learners (78%) cannot read for meaning at the end of Grade 4. South Africa placed last out of the 50 countries participating in the study at fourth grade level. The study also revealed that there was no significant progress nationally since the last report in 2011 for the overall average score. Good news included that between 2011 and 2016 there was a significant improvement in reading literacy achievement for isiNdebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, Tshivenda and Xitsonga. The five language had the lowest performance in the 2011 participation. Learners attending schools in remote rural areas, small towns and townships had the lowest reading literacy achievement. Boys also performed significantly lower than girls in each cycle of PIRLS. The PIRLS 2016 report offers important findings with regards to classroom, school and home factors that are associated with reading achievement as well as recommendations as to how the South African reading crises can be addressed.
Pilot Study on Children’s Reading in Namibia: Pitfalls and New Strategies
Mousaion: South African Journal of Information Studies, 2016
The aim of this article is to report on a pilot study conducted in 2011 that preceded a main study undertaken in 2012, investigating the reading behaviour and preferences of Grade 6 Namibian students. The aims of the pilot study were to develop an easy to answer and reliable questionnaire; to enable emerging researchers to gain experience in data collection through small-scale sampling; and to test whether the instruments of data collection were covering the main aims of the study. The questionnaire was developed and tested three times on small groups before the pilot study. In all 226 students, both rural and urban, from three educational regions in Namibia were included in the pilot study. Vast differences in the students’ language ability and socio-economic situation were observed. The data analysis showed that the researchers underestimated the impact of the social desirability factor and the reading levels of the respondents. The questionnaire had to be drastically redesigned...
Factors affecting Grade 6 learners’ reading performance in a rural school in Maluti, South Africa
Reading & Writing
Background: Rural learners face severe reading challenges that are unique to their environment. The challenges include parents’ low level of education, little or no parental support, lack of reading material, and parents’ low socio-economic status. It is therefore important that rural education research highlights these challenges in order to help in addressing them.Objectives: The study sought to explore the factors affecting the reading performance of Grade 6 learners from the Maluti District in the Eastern Cape.Methods: The study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was followed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 purposively selected learners. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory was used as a theoretical framework to anchor the study. Content analysis was used to analyse the data.Results: The findings showed that the reading performance of learners from rural areas such as the Maluti District was affected by several factors, specifically, the low level of...