Reading comprehension strategies among biliterate grade 7 learners in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

Reading achievement in South Africa is generally cited as one of the lowest in the world. Whereas general reading challenges and lower reading proficiencies have been adequately expressed in the literature, very little is said about the information-processing strategies between learners who juggle between two distal language systems. In order to fill in this void, this study sought to investigate strategies used in processing-processing strategies among 7th graders when reading both English and Sepedi texts in rural Limpopo and to examine the anaphoric interpretation in Sepedi and English texts, to assess the application of inferencing reading strategies in Sepedi and English text, to determine the role of working memory (recall) in processing texts, to examine the differential comprehension levels in two Sepedi dialect; and also to ascertain recall achievement relationship between these languages. Based on data deduced from self-developed equivalent tests for recall, inference and anaphoric resolution among a research population of 150 (n=150) seventh graders from three geographically dispersed schools in Limpopo Province, both descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to analyse central tendencies, measures of dispersion, and mean differences. The results of the study show a relatively low reading achievement in both languages, with the majority of the participants scoring below 50%. However, there was a differential performance, with statistically significant differences in favour of the Sepedi text. These results thus challenge the commonly held assumption that readers developed higher proficiency in English than they did in African languages (see Pretorius and Mampuru, 2007; Pretorius and Currin, 2010). Moreover, the results showed no statistically significant differences between the schools and Sepedi dialects used in the communities around the schools. In the end, implications for threshold hypothesis and suggestions for bi-literate development, emphasising reading achievement in the home language are offered for adaptations in comparable contexts.