Report on BAAL ‘Language in Africa’ SIG meetings Reading in African languages: Developing literacies and reading methodologies

Abstract

This report describes ongoing research on reading in African languages. It draws mainly on contributions from two British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) ‘Language in Africa’ (LiA) Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings: the LiA SIG strand at BAAL 2013 and the seminar on Reading Methodologies in African Languages held at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in January 2014. This report will only cover contributions that focused on reading research and practice.

Language in education in sub-Saharan Africa: Language in Africa Special Interest Group (BAAL)

“…The University of KwaZulu-Natal now offers bilingual courses in Zulu and English in selected disciplines. However, preliminary findings of a study of reading proficiency in Zulu among first language (L1) students suggest they feel insufficiently prepared to learn solely through Zulu (Wildsmith-Cromarty & Mhlophe 2014).…”