Learning to read in English: Comparing monolingual English and bilingual Zulu-English Grade 3 learners

Abstract

The acquisition of reading skills of 100 monolingual English and 100 bilingual ZuluEnglish third-grade learners was investigated by measuring their phonological-and reading skills. Little research exists on how the presence of a spoken-only Zulu (L1) could influence the English (L2) reading acquisition process. PA tasks were correlated with reading measures in English as an L1 and L2, but significant differences were found on all of the measures; implying overall support for use of PA measures for reading achievement in L1 English monolinguals and in the English (L2) of bilingual children, but with the understanding that L1 Zulu spoken proficiency and L2 English-only instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used for L2 English reading acquisition, different from that of the L1 English reading acquisition process. The implications of these findings for L2 reading development and using phonological measures across cultural-linguistic groups, for educational purposes, are discussed.

A linguistic analysis of spelling errors in Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners

“…It is well documented that South Africa is in the midst of a literacy crisis, with a growing body of literature that highlights the country's literacy underachievement (De Sousa & Broom 2011;De Vos, Van der Merwe & Van der Mescht 2014;Pretorius & Mokhwesana 2009;Spaull 2013;Spaull, Pretorius & Mohohlwane 2020). In particular, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS) (Howie et al 2008(Howie et al , 2012(Howie et al , 2017 have shed light on the literacy underperformance of South African children in comparison with international standards.…”