Purple Tod Consulting

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Investigating the Comprehension Iceberg: Developing empirical benchmarks for early grade reading in agglutinating African languages by Nic Spaull (RESEP), Elizabeth Pretorius (UNISA), Nompumelelo Mohohlwane(DBE) RESEP, Stellenbosch University  UKFIET 2017 4 Sept 20

FINDINGS

• Falling at the first hurdle
  •  27% of the learners at the start of Grade 3 were getting every second letter-sound incorrect. 25% of the sample could only correctly sound out 15 letters in a minute. This is insurmountable.
• Accuracy thresholds differ by language
  • Children reading with 95% accuracy or higher can read 51+ wcpm in N.Sotho; 31+ wcpm in Xitsonga; 21+ wcpm in isiZulu
• Minimum fluency thresholds (very similar to accuracy thresholds)
  • to get 25% or more on the comprehension questions (Emergent-reader) one would need to be reading at least
  • 53 WCPM in Northern-Sotho,
  • 39 WCPM in Xitsonga and
  • 20 WCPM in isiZulu
• Minimum comprehension thresholds
  • To get 62,5% or more, then learners need to be reading at least
  • 66 WCPM in Northern Sotho,
  • 48 WCPM in Xitsonga and
  • 32 WCPM in isiZulu.                                                                                                                                                                                      

THE WAY FORWARD

• Differences in word length in the disjunctive and conjunctive orthographies of Northern Sotho and isiZulu respectively affect reading rate. This has important implications for benchmarking and for identifying at-risk readers at different grade levels.
• We need to move beyond a repetitive focus on low comprehension outcomes; this is simply the tip of the iceberg.
• What is lacking is research on the different reading components or the “cognitive-linguistic processes involved in reading” (De Vos et al, 2014) in African languages’
• We need to better understand this cognitive linguistic data generating process for African languages.
• Below the surface there is widespread evidence that most children have not acquired the basic ‘tools’ for reading success – the ability to accurately and fluently decode letters and words and move from an effortful activity to an automated skill