Language and Literacy resources

Sesotho and IsiZulu Reading Project research report

This is a report on a research survey undertaken in 2019 to establish the present state of teaching Sesotho and isiZulu reading in a home language at the Foundation Phase level at twelve Higher Education Institutions that that offer training to Sesotho and isiZulu student teachers.

Skilled reading in isiZulu: what can we learn from it?

Study of what the orthography of isiZulu requires of readers. As an agglutinative language with a conjoined writing system, isiZulu carries meaning not only in separate words, but also in morphemes that cluster together, forming long complex words. Eye tracking data shows that competent adult readers of isiZulu move their eyes across text in saccades (shifts of the point of focus) that are short in comparison with the saccades of efficient reading of English. It also shows that readers of isiZulu fixate on points of text for longer periods than do readers of English. The key argument of the paper is that the orthography of isiZulu has features that require attention by teachers of reading if their learners are to benefit from the advantages that reading in their first language should bring.

Exploring relationships between Oral Reading Fluency and comprehension amongst ESL learners in South Africa

Conference presentation on Oral Reading Fluency and its correlation with comprehension among EFAL learners in South Africa

A short history of reading instruction and in particular of the Whole language versus Phonics dispute.

Teach in first language, it’s key to success

Opinion piece by the Director of the Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy on why switching to second-language teaching too early places pupils at a great disadvantage.

A lively discussion of the entrenched rate of illiteracy among Australian children which identifies a failure in the institutions teaching reading educators to accept evidence-based science on the effective teaching of reading which has five main components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension..

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language Arts and Reading: Elementary

Essentially a curriculum framework for elementary school grades (up to Grade 4). Detailed and useful.

Four standards for reading specialists

For useful standards for reading specialists and subject advisors

English Language Arts and Reading Generalist EC–6 Standards

Twelve well thought out standards with details on What teachers know and on What teachers can do for each standard

Presentation on the work of the National Reading Coalition set up by the National Education Collaboration Trust and the Department of Basic Education's Read to Lead campaign

Towards competency standards for language and literacy teachers

A position paper of the Consolidated Literacy Working Group of PrimTEd on its approach to standards for language and literacy teachers

Why the New Zealand National Literacy Strategy has failed and what can be done about it.

Responding to evidence from PIRLS 2011 and Reading Recovery monitoring data that New Zealand’s 1999 National Literacy Strategy had failed, the authors look at the factors causing the failure (a constructivist orientation towards literacy education with a lack of attention to phonemic awareness and alphabetic coding skills, lack of response to differences in literate cultural capital, and policies on the first year of literacy teaching resistant to providing explicit instruction and assessment) and review more effective strategies based on contemporary theory and research.

Papers on the Core Academic Language Skills Instrument (CALS-I)

The Core Academic Language Skills Instrument (CALS-I) was designed by the Institute of Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education to measure high utility academic language skills hypothesized to support reading comprehension across the content areas in grades 4 through 8.

Using Funda Wande resources in teacher education programmes

Presentation made to a PrimTEd seminar in February 2020

What’s Hot in Literacy. 2018 Report

A useful guide to what topics “literacy experts” (mainly teachers and reading/literacy specialists in the United States, Canada, Phillippines, Australia and Nigeria) are currently most interested in and what they consider most important.

What's hot in literacy - 2020

A useful guide to what topics 1 443 “literacy experts” (mainly teachers and reading/literacy specialists in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Jamaica, Nigeria, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom) are currently most interested in and what they consider most important. Keywords: Language, Literacy, Reading

A study exploring the correlations between the English marks (home language and first additional language) in the National Senior Certificate and the National Benchmark Test (academic literacy) (NBT AL)) scores for University of the Witwatersrand first-year education students. The study found that the same mark in home language and first additional language does not necessarily reflect the same level of English-language academic competence as measured by the NBT AL test. Many students who have been accepted into the university based on their English first additional language marks may need academic support irrespective of their overall performance in the Senior Certificate. There was insufficient evidence to show that the NBT Al is a better discriminator of competency at this point in time.

When signals are lost in aggregation: a comparison of language marks and competencies of first-year university students

A comparative analysis of National Senior Certificate marks and National Benchmark Test (NBT) Academic Literacy (AL) test results for a cohort of first-year education students at the University of the Witwatersrand, which showed that the same mark in English HL and FAL does not necessarily reflect the same level of English language academic competence as measured by the NBT AL test. On average, students who wrote the FAL papers scored between .5 and .9 of a standard deviation below students who wrote the HL paper (and probably need extensive and ongoing academic support).

Popular report on Stanford University research led by Bruce McCandliss that provides some of the first evidence that a specific teaching strategy for reading has direct neural impact. Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading.

Brain wave study shows how different teaching methods affect reading development

Report on a study done at the University of Stanford that shows how different literacy teaching methods affect reading development. Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to the Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction.

Investigating the Comprehension Iceberg: Developing empirical benchmarks for early grade reading in agglutinating African language

Investigating the Comprehension Iceberg: Developing empirical benchmarks for early grade reading in agglutinating African languages

Zenlit. The Expert Reading Teacher materials: 2015-2017

Presentation made to a PrimTEd seminar in February 2020 outlines the Zenlit Project working with Foundation phase teachers and the Expert Reading Teacher course materials released in 2019.