Open to the flaw: Comparing the different skills required for reading English and isiZulu

Land, Sandra

doi:10.1080/10228195.2011.585654

Cited by 32 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…This is lower than what is usually reported in the research literature (in English), and lower than the values obtained by Land (2011). Such infrequent movement back to previous words may reflect a rather superficial reading of the text, with little syntactic integration during comprehension.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 78%

“…Regressions usually account for 10-15% of the saccades of skilled readers (Rayner, 2009(Rayner, : 1460, whereas the only previous study comparing isiZulu and English reading by isiZuluspeakers, Land (2011), found that the frequency of regressions was 20% for English texts and 21% for isiZulu texts respectively. (Land (2011: 59) did not actually present these values, the percentages were calculated using the data in her Table 1, using only the data for the 11 isiZulu speakers.…”

Section: Saccades and Refixationsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…How do such variables operate in agglutinating languages where the linguistic concept of a word is more problematic and word length tends to be longer than in analytic languages? Land's (2011) study suggests that mature readers of isiZulu do not read the language very differently in terms of number of fixations or fixation duration than English, but this may be a major initial challenge for beginner readers, who are not yet able to deal with the demands of longer words on word identification.…”

Section: Some Basic Characteristics Of Agglutinating Versus Analytic mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…The questions that naturally arise are whether the morphological typology of a language affects the way in which words are recognised during the reading process and how eye movement profiles differ or are similar in languages that differ morphologically but share an alphabetic writing system. Land (2011) expected, based on considerations such as these, that fluent adult readers of isiZulu and English would differ in that they would have a higher number of fixations and shorter duration of fixations when reading isiZulu. However, her results indicated that the 11 native speakers of isiZulu read the texts in the 2 languages with an almost identical number of fixations and fixation durations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Eye-tracking has shown that spaces between words are important in the control of eye movement in these languages (Rayner, 2009(Rayner, : 1469. Besides the study by Land (2011), very little eye-tracking research has been done on reading in the African languages in South Africa. African languages are agglutinating languages, with a rich and complex morphological structure whereby prefixes, infixes and suffixes are added to stems to convey grammatical information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is reading in an agglutinating language different from an analytic language? An analysis of isiZulu and English reading based on eye movements

Rooy

Pretorius

2013

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

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In this article we examine the reading ability of Grade 4 learners in their home language, isiZulu and in English (first additional language), using both eye-tracking activities and traditional pen-and-paper reading comprehension assessment. The aim of the study was twofold: firstly, to compare bilingual reading performance in an agglutinating language (isiZulu) and an analytic language (English). The learners' eye-tracking profiles were obtained in both languages to see how they differed across the two languages and their eye-tracking profiles were also analysed according to their comprehension performance in both languages. Secondly, the eye-tracking profiles in both languages were also analysed in terms of reading ability, to determine how eye-tracking profiles differed among strong, average and weak readers in the two languages. In general, pen-andpaper tests showed that the entire group read with relatively low comprehension. The main findings from the eye tracker showed significant differences when the learners read in the two languages, on nearly all the selected eye-tracking variables. The eye movement profiles in isiZulu may be attributable to the longer word units in the conjunctive orthography of isiZulu. However, although there were several significant differences in eye movements between the reading ability groups in English, differences in eye movements due to differential reading skill did not emerge strongly in isiZulu. This may be due to floor effects in novice isiZulu readers or to a longer developmental trajectory in the early stages of reading in isiZulu. Some implications for early reading instruction in isiZulu are briefly considered.Van Rooy and Pretorius 282

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 78%

Section: Saccades and Refixationsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Some Basic Characteristics Of Agglutinating Versus Analytic mentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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