Issues of complexity in reading: Putting Occam's razor aside for now

Pretorius, Elizabeth J.

doi:10.2989/16073614.2010.548016

Cited by 12 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(36 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1.3.6 Socioeconomic Status, the School System and Reading Proficiency As pointed out earlier, socioeconomic status influences learners' reading proficiency (Pretorius, 2010;Taylor & Yu, 2009). The socioeconomic status of a student may determine the school he/she would attend, and the school, in turn, influences factors such as the amount of exposure to texts, methods of reading instruction, and the frequency of reading (Currin & Pretorius, 2010;Taylor & Yu, 2009;Van Staden & Bosker, 2011).…”

Section: Attitude Towards Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Students’ Reading Profiles to Guide a Reading Intervention Programme

Boakye¹

2017

ELT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There have been a number of studies on reading interventions to improve students' reading proficiency, yet the majority of these interventions are undertaken with the assumption that students' reading challenges are obvious and generic in nature. The interventions do not take into consideration the diversity in students' reading backgrounds and the specific nature of the challenges. Thus interventions may not address students' specific reading needs. This paper reports on a study that explored students' reading profiles as a needs analysis for an intervention programme to improve the reading proficiency of first-year Sociology students. The aim was to investigate the students' reading backgrounds to determine their specific reading needs. A Likert scale questionnaire with an open-ended section was used to explore the students' reading profiles. The Likert scale questions were analysed quantitatively, while the open-ended questions were analysed qualitatively. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to determine the correlation between students' use of strategies and their self-efficacy levels. The findings show that a number of students have little reading experience, use inappropriate reading strategies, and have low self-efficacy and poor reading habits. In addition, students identified comprehension, language, vocabulary, length and density of Sociology texts as factors compounding their reading challenges. This paper discusses the implications of these findings in designing an appropriate reading intervention programme for this cohort.

show abstract

Section: Attitude Towards Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Students’ Reading Profiles to Guide a Reading Intervention Programme

Boakye¹

2017

ELT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Reading comprehension is, therefore, the goal of literacy instruction. A necessary but not sufficient component for reading comprehension is fluent word-reading (Snowling & Hulme 2005;Pretorius 2010), which itself relies on automaticity and accuracy in lower-level reading skills. These lower-level skills include phonological awareness (ability to attend to and manipulate the sound structure of a language; Adams 1990), word recognition (ability to recognise a printed word and to connect the visual print form to its phonological string and sematic meaning; Grabe 2012) and reading fluency (automatic and accurate word recognition; Fuchs et al 2001;Hedgcock & Ferris 2018).…”

Section: The Foundations Of Reading Comprehension: Word Recognition Fluency and Language Proficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Early reading skills related to Grade 1 English Second Language literacy in rural South African schools

Schaefer

Kotzé²

2019

South African Journal of Childhood Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the South African curriculum, instruction in English as a second language (ESL) is referred to as English as First Additional Language because English is not necessarily a second language for most learners. However, to align with international literature, we will use the term ESL when referring to English as First Additional Language.Background: Many South African children attend African language medium of instruction (MOI) schools, learn English as an additional language and switch to English MOI three years later. There is still much to be researched about how a child's first and second language literacy develops over time in South Africa.Aim: This study aims to outline the first and second language skills at the start of Grade 1, which are associated with English Second Language literacy at the end of Grade 1 through the use of a longitudinal design.Setting: Data was collected from 80 predominantly rural no-fee isiZulu and Siswati MOI schools in Mpumalanga.Methods: A total of 1347 learners were randomly selected from these schools and were individually assessed on various first language (isiZulu or Siswati) and English skills at the start and end of Grade 1. Results:The data show that learners begin school with varying first and second language oral language proficiency levels, and most learners are pre-literate. Decoding skills improved over the year, but 45.7% and 35% of learners were still unable to read a first language or English word correctly in 1 min. Conclusion:The data confirm the importance of first language phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge for later word-reading abilities in isiZulu, Siswati and English, as well as their importance for English spelling. The study highlights the importance of the systematic development of English oral proficiency during the Foundation Phase especially for rural children who are not exposed to English in their communities.

show abstract

“…In this study, the notion of 'comprehension' is described and situated within a socio-cognitive model of reading literacy, in which reading is viewed as a highly complex phenomenon comprising many cognitive-linguistic skills and component processes that tap into various knowledge bases, all of which are embedded within a social matrix (Pretorius, 2010). The act of reading is thus both an individual cognitive-linguistic accomplishment, as well as socially constituted practice.…”

Section: Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading comprehension in high-poverty schools: How should it be taught and how well does it work?

Pretorius¹,

Lephalala²

2012

Per Ling.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article describes and appraises a reading comprehension programme that was aimed at Grade 6 learners and teachers and implemented in different ways in two high poverty primary schools where reading levels were very low. The programme was implemented during formal school hours at the one school, while it was offered after school as a voluntary afternoon activity at the other school. Because attendance of the voluntary programme was generally poor, the latter school served as a control site. The results of the comprehension programme for the learners’ reading abilities in their home language, Northern Sotho, and in English are reported. On the basis of these findings, we evaluate the programme and identify ‘lessons learned’ from its implementation that may have relevance for future reading comprehension interventions.

show abstract

Issues of complexity in reading: Putting Occam's razor aside for now

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

Exploring Students’ Reading Profiles to Guide a Reading Intervention Programme

Exploring Students’ Reading Profiles to Guide a Reading Intervention Programme

Early reading skills related to Grade 1 English Second Language literacy in rural South African schools

Reading comprehension in high-poverty schools: How should it be taught and how well does it work?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About