Investigating the comprehension iceberg: Developing empirical benchmarks for early-grade reading in agglutinating African languages

Abstract

Background: Reading development in agglutinating African languages is a relatively under-researched area. While numerous studies highlight the low comprehension levels among learners reading in African languages in South Africa, little has been done to probe beneath this ‘comprehension iceberg’ in terms of decoding skills.Aim: As a tentative step towards benchmarking in African languages, we analyse the sub-components of reading across three languages (Northern Sotho, Xitsonga and isiZulu), to better understand the nature of alphabetic knowledge, word reading and fluency in these languages, how these relate to one another, and how accuracy and speed relate to comprehension.Setting: Data was obtained from 785 Grade 3 learners across three African languages in three provinces in South Africa.Methods: The early grade reading assessment (EGRA) framework was adapted to the written features of the three languages to assess letter-sounds, single-word reading, non-word reading, oral reading fluency (ORF) and oral comprehension.Results: We present results on fluency, accuracy and comprehension and their interrelationships in these morphologically rich languages. While differences emerged between the conjunctive and disjunctive orthographies, strong relations occurred across the languages between letter-sound knowledge and word reading, word reading and oral reading fluency, and ORF and reading comprehension. Results suggest minimum thresholds of accuracy and ORF in each language, below which it is virtually impossible to read for meaning.Conclusion: There is a strong need for language-specific norms and benchmarks for African languages. Preliminary minimum decoding thresholds for comprehension found in these three languages serve as a move in that direction.

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

“…Furthermore, because of its conjunctive orthography there are relatively few free morphemes, and single syllable words are less common. There are also many complex graphemes in the language, including diagraphs (〈dl〉, 〈ph〉, 〈tl〉), trigraphs (〈ngw〉, 〈kgw〉) and four-letter consonant sequences (〈ntlh〉) (Spaull et al 2020). Alternatively, it can be argued that the complex graphemes allow for more combinations to learn, which results in longer learning times.…”

“…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.…”

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

“…This intensified efforts and discussions to both understand why this situation exists, and to provide viable solutions to get children 'reading for meaning by age 10' 3 (Reeves 2017, Hickman, 2018, Bua-lit Language and Literacy Collective 2018, Fleisch and Dixon 2019. But the view of reading which dominates research, policy and curriculum related interventions reflects the Simple View of Reading (Spaull et al 2020) and early literacy teaching in classrooms is still characterised by the foregrounding of decontextualised exercises.…”

“…Recent initiatives include an acknowledgement that learning to read and write should begin in languages children understand; this has led to attention being given to establishing reading benchmarks in African languages (Spaull et al 2020, Jukes et al 2020; also increased government level action on the recognition that the years before formal school are crucial ones for laying firm learning foundations (DoE 2015, Harrison 2020. This is in response to the broad global consensus that during their preschool years, children learn best in informal, meaning and play based ways, including their oral language foundations and first steps to literacy.…”

Indo-European languages

“…In the context of education, work in psycholinguistics and applied linguistics has taken on a grave urgency, with the alarming findings of a recent international survey that 78 per cent of Grade 4 children in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language, including their own mother tongue, where the South African results were the lowest out of 50 countries surveyed (Spaull 2017).28 Recently presented preliminary evidence (Spaull, Pretorius and Mohohlwane 2018) suggests that the disjunctive system of writing used for the Sotho-Tswana languages may be a factor contributing to the slow acquisition of reading skills.…”